Secrets of the King of Chimeras
by vampirebabe
Summary: What if Edward had a deeper, more personal reason for hating his father than Al knew? What if Edward was too good at keeping secrets and at lying? What if Edward wasn't entirely human? This is my tale containing all those elements. Basic summery chapter 1
1. Prologue

**Prologue **

Not many people ever realize just how great of a secret keep Edward Elric was. Sure, there were quite a few people whom knew that Edward Elric had attempted human alchemy which resulted in his automail and his brother's armor. Even less, but still plenty, knew that Al, Edward's brother, was nothing more than an empty suit of armor with a blood sear inside that tied the very essence of the younger Elric to this earthly plain. Yes, there was little doubt that Edward was an excellent secret keeper, but what only three people other than Edward knew was that Edward was keeping a secret from his younger brother that was so big that it would completely shatter Alphonse Elric's foundations and beliefs in his brother and everything that he knows and loves. 

Yes, Edward Elric was an extraordinary secret keeper. 

The secret that Edward kept from everyone else was a secret that he had kept since he was two years old. His mother had kept that very same secret for one year longer. They both had kept this very important secret from Al, so that he, Edward's mother, Trisha, explained, could lead and live out an ordinary life that they themselves could not. So Edward was raised learning, knowing and living the art of secret keeping. 

Yes, it was a very important secret. 

It was because of this secret that Edward was shaped into the person that he is. It is his reason for his short stature and his quick healing. It was his reason for his high pain tolerance and his quite extraordinary appetite. It was the reason for his hair and eyes that neither of his parents possessed. This secret was the reason for his quick reflexes, his nimble movements and his incredible strength. It was the secret behind his brilliance, his quick wit and his incredible analytical mind. It was the reason for his staggeringly explosive anger and his excessively showy ego. It was because of this secret that Edward Elric hated his father so much. 

You see, while many would assume that it was because Hoenhiem Elric abandoned them, they would be partly correct. Others believed that it was because Hoenhiem never returned home when they needed him, when Trisha Elric, his wife, had needed him. This too was correct but not the reason. And others, like Alphonse, believed that it was because Hoenhiem of Light had hurt the mother of young Alphonse and Edward Elric. This too is true but not the true reason. The reason was much bigger, much more appalling and personal then that. 

This very secret of what Hoenhiem had done had killed Trisha Elric and it might one day kill Edward as well. That was why Edward Elric hated his father. 

Edward's earliest memory was of an activated alchemy circle, a large yellow cat that he now knew was a leopard, and a very small yellow kitten. He remembers standing in the middle of the alchemy circle with the two cats while he watched his mother in the doorway, crying and reaching for him. In this memory, Edward's earliest, was of his father turning him into a chimera. 

That was Edward's deepest darkest secret. The fact that he wasn't human but rather that he was nothing more than a chimera that could speak the human tongue. That was part of the reason why he had been so interested in Shou Tucker's research and why he had been so appalled and angry about what had happened to Nina. It had reminded him of what his father had done to him, but at least his father had actually made him and his mother as true perfect chimeras. 

A perfect chimera, Edward knew from his father's notes, was a chimera that could shift forms independently from their 'human' form to their 'animal' form, and were capable of human speech. Both of these things Trisha and Edward Elric were capable of, so thusly, they were perfect chimera. Edward hated it. 

While growing up, Trisha had raised Edward to be a leader. A king, she said, because when he was older and had found and chosen his mate, he would become king of the chimera in appearance, but queen in actuality. 

That was the other reason why Edward hated Hoenhiem so much. The man had taken away his sex, his gender. He was neither man nor woman, but rather he was both. He was cursed to a life of confusion and a lack of sense of identity. All this was because Hoenhiem merged him with two female felines. 

Yes, Edward Elric had good reason to hate Hoenhiem of Light, but there was also another reason why Edward hated him He also hated his father because he was the reason that his mother, Trisha Elric, died. 

Edward wasn't just a good secret keeper, but he was also an accomplished liar. One would have to be, one would think. to keep such an important secret, but that's quite untrue. One can keep such a large and important secret with distractions, avoidance, illusions, partial truths and by simply keeping your mouth shut. But the fact was, was that Edward was most definitely an accomplished liar. 

After their mother had died, Edward had lied to Alphonse. He had told his brother that it had been an illness that had taken away their mother's health, something that she had contracted recently but that he and Al were immune to. Alphonse had believed his lie, never questioning its validity. Yes, Edward was very good at lying. 

There was a very little known fact about chimeras that only three other than Edward knew, and two of them were dead. It was during Hoenhiem research before he had changed Trisha and Edward that he discovered that if a mated chimera mated for life. He also discovered that if a mated chimera was separated from their mate for too long, the chimera would die, and if the chimera's mate wasn't another chimera, then their mate would be fine. 

Guess what happened to Trisha Elric. It had been the fact that only Hoenhiem return would save his mother that had prompted Edward to send those letters begging for his father to return to their mother. He never came back so Trisha Elric had died. 

Just another reason to hate Hoenhiem of Light. 

Edward had never enjoyed or even liked keeping secrets or lying, but he knew that it was necessary. He grew up understand that. He also grew up knowing that if his secret ever came out that Alphonse would never be able to live a normal life and that he, Edward, would be taken captive by the military and used as an experiment and would most likely be dissected. 

You would thing that because of this knowledge that he would run as far and fast from the military as he could, but there was another little known fact about chimeras that actually forced Edward to join the military. 

Chimeras, when they feel emotion, feel them so strongly that they cannot control their reactions to them. It they're happy, they're very happy. It they're angry, they're enraged. If they feel guilty, they'll do anything and everything that they can to make things right and to make up for their transgressions. And Edward felt very guilty about what he had done to Al because of his own selfish greed. 

Now here was a fact that only Edward knew about chimeras. Chimeras are incapable of feeling sad, they can feel regret, loneliness and despair, but not sadness, depression, forlorn or bereaved. Yes, that was the reason why Edward hadn't cried at his mother's funeral. He only had a sense of loneliness since his mother had been his greatest companion, his pard mate. It was because of this loneliness that had driven him to his attempt of brining her back from the dead. 

Edward knew the three reasons why he had failed to bring his mother back from the dead. The first reason had been because he hadn't included any household cat or tiger parts to make up for his mother's chimera side. He had tired to bring her back human, to give her, her life that Hoenhiem had stolen away. The second had been because he hadn't offered up something large enough, precious enough for his mother's soul. That had been why Alphonse had been taken, for their mother's soul while his arm had been taken for the chimera half of his mother, parts of her DNA which was needed to form his mother's human body into the shape, the form that it had originally been. That had been his biggest mistake. His third mistake had been impatience. He now knew how to bring back the dead. You first made the body then you did a spirit attachment somewhere safe inside of the body. You had to do two transmutations to bring the dead back to life. 

This was a secret that Edward planned on taking to the grave with him. 

Edward Elric was a great many things. He was a state alchemist, a child prodigy, a good older brother, a determined researcher, a good person, an excellent detective, a superb liar and an astonishing secret keeper. But above all else, he was a chimera, an animal masquerading as a human being. 

Above all else, Edward Elric hated himself. 


	2. Chaspter 1: Return to Central

Chapter 1

Returning to Central

Edward growled in frustration as he wrapped his chest in the bathroom. For the past four months since he had started his monthly cycle his chest had remained small enough to go unnoticed but recently Edward had noticed that he could feel his chest moving underneath his shirt and he knew that if he could feel it then it could also be seen. So, about a week ago he had begun wrapping his chest. He wasn't quite used to it yet. 

"Good thing the bastard's not here." Edward grumbled, thinking of his commanding officer who would have definitely noticed his larger chest without it wrapped. Then part of his secret would be out. 

A knock on the door startled Edward, making his jump with a yelp. 

"Brother?" Al's soft voice came softly through the door. "Are you alright? You've been in there for a while." 

Edward flushed as he quickly finished wrapping his chest and secured the wrapping. He reached over and flushed the toilet as he called back through the door, "Ah, yeah Al, I'm just finishing up is all." 

"Oh!" Came the obviously embarrassed reply from Al. "I'll just wait for you by out things." Edward listened to his younger brother's heavy footsteps clunk away as his guilt inside grew. 

It wasn't "their" things that Al was going to go sit next to but rather they were "Ed's" things. Al didn't need anything, he as just a soul attached to an amour suit. 

"All because of my selfishness." murmured Edward as he stared into the bathroom's mirror. Giving into his self hatred, he punched the mirror, shattering his reflection. He stared dispassionately into the broken shards before clapping his hands and fixing it with his alchemy. 

Edward quickly and expertly braided his hair before turning and leaving the bathroom. As soon as his hand met the doorknob his mask was back on, hiding his true self from the world. 

Edward made his way through the train back towards where he and Al were sitting. For the past month and a half they had been out on a mission. They had only had a two day break when Mustang had given them the mission they were returning from. Their last mission had been two months long with a brief stop in Risembool to visit Winry and Pinako. 

That had been when he, Edward, had started his monthly cycles. Thankfully Pinako had been there to help him, showing his how he could wrap himself so he could still be active with no one finding out half of his secret. 

"Brother, are you hungry?" Al asked as Edward plopped down across from him, who gave him a small smile. 

"No Al, I'm fine." Edward lied despite the fact that he could feel his stomach growling. It wasn't fair that he could eat but that his little brother couldn't, and it was all because of his selfishness. 

"Are you sure, Brother?" Al asked. Edward nodded, pulling his suit case towards himself. 

"Nah, but I think I will study for a bit. Why don't you go ask how much longer until we're there?" Edward suggested knowing that it would cheer up his younger brother. Al straightened up and seemed to smile at him. 

"That's a good idea, big brother. I'll also call the colonel and tell him that we'll be back tonight. If we're early enough you can go and report tonight and we could spend all day of tomorrow doing more research on the philosopher's stone." Edward gave a little groan at the mention of his superior officer. 

"Fine, go ahead." Ed said with a waving gesture. Al then stood up and strode towards the front car where he could find the conductor. 

Edward watched his brother's hulking form leave the car before he turned back to his little black book. The first twenty pages didn't seem like much, just doodles, names and a couple vague alchemic terms, something a child learning alchemy would do that seemed to mean nothing, but it truth it was encrypted and held one of the most powerful secrets in the world. It was the answer to a question that alchemists had been asking for centuries. All it took was for a ten year old prodigy who was a chimera to find the answer. The answer to how to bring the dead back to life. 

After their failed attempt at bringing their mother back to life, Edward had figured it out, what they had done wrong. They had rushed the process which was their failure, not the process itself. 

The first step to bringing the dead back to life was to create a replica, a mirror image of the body the person had, had before their death. This is accomplished by using a piece of their body that has their essence in it, like hair, blood, maybe even a tooth. You add their essence with the other materials to create the human body and meld it into the person's new body. You didn't add the soul to it, you just molded the body. 

The second part was adding the blood seal, or rather the soul binding array which he called the soul seal. The soul seal should be added somewhere it won't be seen or bothered by anything. That was why the words 'pelvis', 'skull', and 'heart' were written over the pictures of them as suggested places for the seal where the bones were unlikely to break or get pierced, along with the heart, for the puncture or tear. If the heart was stabbed or punctured, then the person would die anyways, which was another reason to place the soul seal there. 

The final step is the actual summoning/trade for the soul. Depending on the importance of the soul to the person summoning it, the larger the trade was. That was why his mother's summoning had been one of his legs and had cost his brother his entire body and consequently his soul. His brother's soul had cost him his right arm, an equal trade as his mother's. Both limbs had been his dominate limbs. If he had summoned a complete stranger, he would have only lost something small like a tooth or a fingernail. 

After you summoned and sealed the soul to the body, a jolt of alchemic power then needed to be jolted into the body to jump start the body's organs into working. Once the body was suitably working, the person should awake soon after, alive and aware of everything going on around them, and this included their memories since Al's soul attachment proved that memories are imbedded into the soul as well as the brain. 

Ever since he had recovered from their mother's transmutation, which he had never told Alphonse was a mangled success, he had fought with himself over just making Al a new body, but he had made a promise to Al several times during recovery while he had been drugged up that he would never "attempt" human alchemy again. Making a new body for Al would be considered human alchemy and he wouldn't break his promise to his little brother. 

The philosopher's stone, though, Alphonse had convinced him, wasn't really human alchemy since it was the stone doing the transmutation, not them. A loop-hole in alchemic laws, Edward surmised eventually from Al's begging and their research on the stone. 

"It would be so easy to just give it all back to him if he would let me." Edward whispered, guilt festering once more. Shaking his head, he flipped through the pages of his small book that held all of his projects that he worked on when they weren't looking for the stone or when he was taking a break (i.e. traveling, visiting Winry, looking for ways to help with both of his conditions). 

His side projects were projects on how to use human alchemy to help people and make them better in a medical sense. Most of these projects were quickly healing wounds, setting bones and mending them, getting rid of infections in the deepest and unreachable parts of the body, even reducing scar tissue, something he had experimented on himself where his automail joined his body and found that the reduction in scar tissue worked. The only problem with him was that the scar tissue kept regrowing, but this he factored to his chimera healing capabilities. 

He was now working on regrowing nerve endings and repairing damage to joints, nerves and malformed bones. 

The inspiration for his latest project had been a crippled boy he had seen in the streets of Central whose leg had grown misshapen and too small. The boy had been hobbling along on his crutch, begging for money for food. He, Edward, had slipped the boy the loaf of bread that he had just bought and walked away towards the library so he could start researching for a way to fix the boy. 

Obviously the joints were damaged since the boy couldn't use his leg to even stand, which would also indicate nerve damage around the joints, according to some of the books and Auntie Pinako (Edward had called her with some questions). The regrowing of the bone would be tricky, along with the added muscle, tendons, nerves, skin and veins would he would have to grow along with the bone so the leg was functional and not just visually fixed. 

"Perhaps if I added a line here which would form the necessary double triangle for the nerve growth but that would throw off the skin growth and hinder the tendon formation, making them too weak to function properly. But if I add a pentagon here with two sets of lines pointing at 49 degrees and 120 degrees then that would strengthen the tendons but make joint repairs too strong and cause them to be oversized. I wonder if-" Edward mumbled to himself as he examined his notes, mentally drawing the array and adding and detracting the alterations as he went. 

About an hour later when he had the array half formed, Alphonse returned. Edward quickly found a pencil and sketched the half formed array in his notebook before putting it away and giving Al his undivided attention. 

"We'll be at Central in ten minutes and Colonel Mustang says that you're to report tomorrow at nine and to have a written report with you." Al informed him. Edward groaned as he rubbed his eyes. He hated having to wake up in the morning as Mustang well knew. What Mustang didn't know was that it was because of his feline side since felines are mostly nocturnal. That was why he tended to stay up late into the night even if he had been up and active all day because his body knew that it was night and didn't want him to sleep. 

"Thanks Al." Edward muttered sarcastically, wondering why he had let Al call ahead to let Mustang know that they were coming back that day.

"You're welcome brother!" Al chirped, completely missing the sarcasm. Edward sweat dropped at this but internally he was smiling. His brother had been through so much and was still going through so much more, but he had still managed to retain his innocence and naivety, which Edward personally hoped that he'd never lose. He would take all the pain and bad things for his brother and keep him safe, that was what he and their mother had agreed upon. 

"Brother, when we get back, can we go for a walk through the park? Its spring which means that everything's blooming and they'll be so pretty! Please?" Al begged. 

"We can do that, Al. In fact the library is near the park so while you're looking at everything, I can go get a couple of books that I need." Edward's mind had gone back to his project, having come up with a few new ideas and problems with his plans to fix that kid's leg. 

It always saddened Ed a bit knowing that because of his promise to his little brother that he could never actually see if his projects worked, not even on himself, except for the scar reducing project because the scar tissue was growing into his automail and damaging it. After discussing this with Auntie Pinako, they had gotten Alphonse to give him permission for that kind of human alchemy alone (removing scar tissue) because it helped his older brother and made less work for the Rockbells. 

"Okay! Then we can go visit the Hughes!" Alphonse chirped happily. "Mr. Hughes invited us over for supper while I was talking to the Colonel." 

Instantly images of Elysia began to flood his mind, causing him to shudder. The young girl was cute, yes, but after a couple of thousand of pictures of her, she became quite terrifying and for her father to become a man to avoid at all costs. Edward swore that he had, had nightmares about those pictures of the young girl, which worried him a little. 

"You didn't mention that earlier." Edward growled, causing Al to shrink back. "You know that, that man is to be avoided. The pictures." He shuddered. 

"Oh look! We're here!" Al exclaimed, quickly changing the subject. Edward sighed as he felt the train slowing and looked out to see that his brother was indeed telling the truth. Sighing once more, he began to gather everything up. He watched out the window until he felt the train shudder to a stop before standing up. 

"Let's drop everything off at the dorms before we go to the park." Alphonse nodded. 

"Alright, big brother." 

Edward began to feel the guilt settle in they walked towards the dorms. It wasn't like he didn't like the Hughes, not even Maes. He liked them all, especially Maes, something which he would never admit even under torture, but he knew that if he could ever be apart of a family again, he would pick the Hughes family because they're the most genuine and loving family that he knows. 

He hadn't meant to get angry at Al for not telling him that they had been invited over for dinner at the Hughes's home, but when his thoughts had gone to the library he had made the plan to curl up in their dorm room with his books and do research all night, something that Al would scold him for often enough. When Al had told him that, his plans had been shattered and he had been a bit disappointed so he had taken it out on Al and said those bad things about Hughes. 

He would have to make it up to Al and the Hughes, even though the Hughes didn't know that he had said those terrible things. 

"Hey, Al, why don't you head to the park and I'll meet you there after I drop off everything at the dorms and get the books I need from the library? That way you can spend more time looking at everything in the park." Edward suggested. 

Al's armor seemed to brighten a bit as he suggested this. Edward smiled, relieved that his brother was happier now. 

"Are you sure brother?" Al asked. 

"Yeah, I'm sure. Now go run off and have some fun." Alphonse nodded and clunked off towards the park. Edward watched him go, smile lighting on his face. As long as Al was happy then all was good with the world. 

Instantly his mood plummeted as he turned and headed towards their dorm. How could Al be happy while he was trapped in that suit of armor? If he hadn't been so selfish then Al would be running around in his normal human body back in Risembool without a care in the world other than asking Winry out on a date. 

That was another thing that Edward felt terribly guilty about. He knew that Al had a crush on Winry, he always had, but Winry had always had a crush on him and not his younger brother. He was stealing Al's love's love. And he knew that he could never return her love because his chimera side, his female side, yearned for a male lover. 

Someone like Roy Mustang.

Edward shivered as he thought about his commanding officer. He hated that man, yes, but he couldn't help but be attracted to him as well. He was tall and strong, willing to stand up to him, to dominate him. Edward shivered again, a delighted smile crossing his features. 

He had never met someone who could match him, who would do so willingly and even provoke those dominance fights. To know that Mustang had such a fiery spirit and was willing to prove to him time and time again that he was bigger and stronger and could dominate him, that made both his human and animal sides shiver with pleasure. 

But he knew that he could never have Mustang as a mate. First of all, Mustang only liked women, not men. Sure, he was both, but that was the problem in itself, he was both. How could Mustang ever come to look at or even consider mating with a freak like him? 

The second problem was that Edward had absolutely no intentions of ever mating with anyone. To have to sit there and watched as his mother wither away just because their father, her mate, wouldn't return was terrible and terrifying. He didn't ever want to be so dependent upon another person and have to trust that they will always be there to make sure that he could live. 

The third problem was how he would tell Al that he was supposedly gay if he ever did mate with someone. Sure, since he was half female that would mean that he was straight, but he was half male as well which would make him gay. So did that make him bisexual? But that wouldn't be right since he only liked men and not women. But having to sit down and tell Al and possibly face his rejection? No, he couldn't handle that, not the blatant rejection from one of his remaining pard mates. He would continue to be asexual, completely uninterested in anything and everything having to do with mating. 

Shaking those thoughts from his head, Edward came to a stop outside of his and Al's dorm room. He set down his bags and pulled the key to the room from his pocket and unlocked the door. Once inside, Edward pulled the tie from his braid and shook his hair loose. Running his fingers through it, he walked towards the bathroom. 

That was one thing that he had been glad about to find in the dorms here was that they had private bathrooms. He shivered to think about what would have happened if there had only been public bathrooms and showers that all the men in the building had to share. He shuddered to think of how fast his secret would have been out and about if he had been forced to shower in public. 

Once he was in the bathroom, he picked up one of the brushes that he had on the sink's counter and began to brush his hair. That was one thing that had always annoyed him about traveling. His hair always got so tangled up, especially since he couldn't carry all of his brushes with him. 

Just like any feline, Edward was very prideful of how he kept his appearance. He was constantly brushing out his hair when they were here at home. Whenever no one was around to watch him, he was constantly brushing out his hair then re-braiding it before anyone noticed. He couldn't let his hair get out of control just because he had already brushed his hair once before that day, could he?

That was also why he always wore such tight revealing clothes as well even though they were hot and uncomfortable. He knew that he looked good, after all, he took care of his body and made sure that his appearance was always perfect, even going as far as oiling and shining his automail several times a day. Al had even gone so far as to call him a girl when he caught him doing his nails. It wasn't his fault that he was prideful in his appearance; it was the cat in him. 

Edward ran the brush through his hair several times, and after every five strokes he would run his fingers through until he no longer caught any snags in his hair. Once he was finished, he quickly braided his hair back up, checked his reflection before promptly leaving the dorm room, making sure to lock the door behind him, and quickly made his way towards the park and the library. 

That was one joy that Ed shared with Al, the park. The park was a peaceful part of the journey to the library since the dorms lay on one side of the park and the library lay on the other. Al enjoyed the scenery and watching children play and the animals that people would bring through the park. Edward enjoyed the smells of the plants and trees, but that was all. The noise that people made hurt his ears, all those people and animals clustered together smelled terrible, and he didn't enjoy having people asking him if he had lost his parents and needed help in finding them. That last thing really pissed him off and it seemed to happen once or twice a week at the very least. Al enjoyed spending the daytime here while Ed preferred to spend his time here at night. 

Edward was pleased to note as he made his way through the park that there didn't seem to be too many people there that day. It made it slightly more bearable as he went through the park. Ed caught sight of Alphonse picking up a kitten from behind a trash can. This caused him to groan before remembering his words earlier about the Hughes. He winced. 

"I'll let him keep him for a couple days as apology." Edward mumbled, ducking his head and continuing onwards before his younger brother noticed him. If he pretended not to notice the kitten until later that night, he could get away with it then by saying that he wasn't heartless enough to abandon a kitten at night. 

As he entered the library, he wondered why Al had such a fondness for cats in particular. Cats always unnerved him because of his relation with them, and they too sensed the relation they had with him. They were always cuddling with him, bringing him treats, trying to engage him in play. It was rather bothersome, especially since Al thought that it was absolutely adorable and thought that he just had an affinity with animals. 

Black Hayate flashed through his mind. He shuddered. No, he definitely didn't have an affinity with animals as far as dogs were concerned. 

There had been one time when he and Black Hayate had met. The dog hadn't liked him, probably sensing that he was a chimera, and had bitten him on his real leg. He had jerked his leg away and hissed, cuffing Black Hayate and sending him across the room. He had accidentally transformed into his chimera form and growled at the dog, snarling at him to never come near him again. He had then quickly transformed back into his human form and pretended like nothing had happened when everyone returned. Riza had spent days trying to figure out why Black Hayate would run and hide whenever Ed and Al came into the same room. Finally Ed had brought the stupid dog a chew toy and had whispered to the stupid dog that he didn't have to hide but to just stay away from him and nothing would happen. Afterwards Black Hayate just kept his distance from Edward but wouldn't hide anymore. 

"Damn dog." He muttered, showing his watched to one of the librarians as he passed. He didn't even know why he did that anymore. All the librarians knew him on sight now. None of them would ever dare try and stop him as he came in. 

Edward spent two hours searching through books, gathering what he needed and making notes on others that he would like to peruse through later on. He glanced at the clock in the library and noticed that it was 5:30 pm. He began to gather up his books when he felt a shiver go down his back and a familiar scent flooded his senses. 

"Hey Ed, wanna see pictures of my cute little Elysia? She's so adorable! Look here, this is her playing with this bear that we just bought her and isn't she so cute? And smart too! Here's her untying the bow around the bear's neck! Absolutely brilliant! I swear one day she's going to be a doctor or a scholar!" 

Ed groaned and his forehead met with the book full of pictures which he knocked out of Maes Hughes's hands and onto the table. Hughes just laughed and clapped him on the back. 

"Glad to see you're home, Eddo! Ready for dinner? Al's waiting outside for us, and I figured that knowing you that you'd need to be dragged away from all this knowledge just to eat. And don't worry my beautiful wife Gracia has prepared enough food to feed you and the rest of us." Maes continued to chatter, pulling his photo album from underneath Edward's face and stowed it away from wherever it had come from. Ed had always wondered if the man knew some sort of alchemy where he could hide that stupid album until he wanted to pull it out and torture some poor innocent soul. 

"Hughes, do you specialize in torture?" Edward asked suspiciously. A confused look blossomed across Maes's face. 

"No, why?" he asked. Edward shook his head, gathering up the books. 

"Nothing." Edward then shoved half of the books that he planned on taking back to the dorm with him into Maes's arms, causing the man to gasp for breath as the books knocked the wind out of him. Edward then collected up the rest and began to walk towards the front desk to check out the books. Maes, like an obedient dog (similar to what he was for the military) followed Edward, carrying the heavy books that Edward had just shoved off onto him. 

"Why do you need so many books?" he asked. 

"Research." Edward replied shortly, not even glancing at the older man who shot him a glare. 

"Why'd you have to give me the heavy books?" he whined, then he glanced down at Ed's stack and noticed that not only did he carry more books than he did, but that they were also thicker. 

"I didn't." Edward placed his books on the front desk which Maes quickly copied. The librarian smiled at Edward as she began the process of checking out the books. 

"Welcome home, Mr. Elric. It's been a while since you've been in here. Your last mission go well?" she asked, deftly punching each card and writing down the title of the book, the author of the book, the date and who was checking it out which was Edward. 

"It was okay." Edward mumbled. "Boring." 

The woman smiled at Edward's words. She heard him say the same thing every time he came back from a mission and in a few months she would hear the stories of what he had done on that mission. 

"Somehow I doubt that Mr. Elric. I see you're checking out medical books again." The woman continued on conversationally. Maes's eyes sharpened at her words and began to examine the books as she checked them out. Edward was oblivious to this though, used to the chatty librarian as she checked out his books. 

"Yeah." He yawned, his jaw cracking in the process. "Research." 

"I'm sure whatever it is that you're researching that it must be absolutely fascinating. How is your brother by the way, Mr. Elric? Haven't seen him in a while either." She said, finishing up with the last book. 

"He's fine. Waiting for us outside." 

"Ah, then it's a good thing that we're all done. Wouldn't want for him to wait long. Here you go, Mr. Elric, and I'm sure we'll be seeing all these books back before the end of the week as usual. Have a good evening, Mr. Elric." The librarian stacked all the books up for Edward, who took half, giving them to Maes before taking the other half and walking away without even bidding the librarian farewell. 

"Well that was rather rude, Edward. Not even saying goodbye or anything." Maes chastised as they walked out of the library. 

"Why bother? She knew I was leaving. That tends to happen when you check out books." Edward replied shortly. As they walked out, Edward spotted Al standing at the bottom of the steps patiently. He quickly descended the steps with Maes trailing behind. 

"Did you find what you needed, brother?" Alphonse asked. Edward smiled and nodded. 

"Yeah." Suddenly Edward's stomach released a rather loud growl. Edward blushed and laughed. "Guess I'm hungry." 

Maes laughed at Ed, always enjoying how Al's presence would instantly send Edward into a good mood. He had always noticed that about the two of them. Ed tended to be a bit closed off and stand-offish if Alphonse wasn't around, but when he was, Edward was a cheerful little guy who while still closed off, seemed a bit more open. He had always just figured that it was because the two of them had only had each other for a while which had made Edward mistrustful and protective of Al. 

"It's a good thing then that its time for dinner and that Gracia and Elysia are waiting for us." Maes said. Alphonse then noticed that Maes was carrying half of Edward's books and gasped, hurrying to help him with the books. 

"Brother, that's rude! Making Mr. Hughes carry your books!" Alphonse scolded. Edward shrugged. 

"He wasn't carrying anything." Ed replied. 

"I'm so sorry for my brother, Mr. Hughes. He knows better than to-" Al began but Maes cut him off. 

"Don't bother Al. If I hadn't wanted to carry them then I wouldn't have picked them up, I offered and it wasn't a bother. Really." He lied. Edward noticed this instantly and his golden eyes sharpened. Maes noticed this and tucked it away for later analysis. He had meant to spend more time with these two but whenever they were in Central he was either too busy with work or he couldn't find them anywhere. It was rather frustrating, especially since everything he learned about these two was fascinating. 

"Oh!" Alphonse replied to Maes's lie, embarrassed to having supposedly scolded his brother for no reason.

"Ah, but thank you for relieving me of those books, Al. Those are rather heavy, aren't they?" Maes laughed. "I don't know how Ed carries them." 

"Automail arm." Edward replied simply, ignoring the fact that he was carrying the books with two arms rather than one. To him the books were rather light and easy to carry, nothing like throwing and fighting with a stone spear. 

"Oh, well that makes sense." said the surprised man, scratching his head in thought. He hadn't thought about how strong Edward's automail arm must have been since it was made out of steel. 

As they walked towards the Hughes home, Al and Maes chit-chatted about things going on in Central. Edward was too distracted as he thought about his project that he had been working on, on the train. Some of the things that he had read while searching through those books had caused him to rethink about his array and he had decided to tear it back down to it's basic steps, which pissed him off a bit. 

Edward was a prodigy in alchemy and had a brilliant mind when it came to the theory, the practical, and the applications, but there were a couple of small problems in his alchemy knowledge. Edward had never truly learned the basics of alchemy, like why certain components to the array were added and the different kind of anchors needed. He knew about them, he knew how to do them, but that was about it.

Some people would be shocked by how much basic alchemy that Edward didn't know about. What most people didn't realize was that Edward wasn't taught alchemy, nor was he learning out of beginners books. He had learned alchemy from his father's private stash of alchemy books that had all been advanced alchemy about human transmutations and alchemy that was related to his research towards creating the perfect chimera. 

Alphonse had learned the same way as well, but he had mostly concentrated on the book on how to draw and design arrays and a couple of books on how to fix things rather than create. Edward had kept him away from all the chimera creation books, which wasn't hard since Alphonse hadn't really learned how to read until he was seven, letting Edward teach him everything that he knew and when Edward hadn't been teaching him, he had learned from the pictures in the books. It wasn't until their mother passed away that Edward let Al read the human alchemy books, hiding away the chimera books so Al wouldn't look in them for information. Al had never noticed. 

When they had gone to live with Izumi Curtis and her husband Sig, they had learned a very small amount about basic alchemy since Izumi had assumed that they already knew it since they were already transmuting stuff. Al had learned the most about basic alchemy from her since he kept stumbling and screwing up in his transmutations from his lack of knowledge and imagination. It was by his stubbornness and imagination alone that Edward had succeeded in most of his transmutations. 

Later on when they lived with Shou Tucker, Al had mostly studied basic alchemy, occasionally dipping into the more advanced stuff. Ed, on the other hand, had dived straight into all of the advanced stuff, completely ignoring all the basics, assuming that they would test only on advanced knowledge and not basic. That was why Al had done so well on the written test and Ed hadn't. 

It was because of Edward's lack of knowledge about basic alchemy that he struggled so much with the creation of arrays to help heal people. Of course, with enough knowledge, he could just clap his hands and do it without an array, but that wasn't the point. The point was that he wanted other alchemists to be able to use the array and it made him think, to use his brain with these exercises. Sure, he would never be able to use any of these arrays, other than his scar reducing one, and he would never show anyone his research, but it didn't hurt to figure things like this out. 

"Maes, I see you found the two of them. Hurry up inside, it's a little chilly out there. We wouldn't want you guys to catch a cold." Gracia's familiar voice called. 

Edward, Maes and Alphonse peered up at the Hughes home, seeing Gracia standing in the open doorway, a warm smile beaming down at them. Her eyes sparkled with mirth seeing them. Maes instantly sprinted ahead of them to his wife and cuddled against her with a swift kiss on the cheek.

"It's good to be home." Maes whispered against her cheek, making her giggle. Edward heard his words with his enhanced hearing, rolled his eyes at this, like a normal teenage boy would, but inside he felt a stab at his heart. He could never be like this with another person. He didn't want to die the way his mother did. 

Mustang flashed before his eyes again, which caused him to shake his head in irritation. Both Maes and Gracia noticed this, but Alphonse, used to his brother's eccentric behavior, as he thought of them, failed to notice. 

"Are the others here?" Maes asked, catching both Al's attention and Ed's. Al began to shift uneasily, not having told Ed the whole story after he had snapped at him for not telling him about dinner with the Hughes. He knew that the entire office was here, which meant Mustang, Hawkeye, Breda, Falman, Havoc, and Fuery were here for dinner as well. 

"They're all in the living room with Elysia. Roy was even so nice as to help me set the table." Edward clenched his hand at her words, but managed to keep his face completely neutral. It took all that he had not to react at her words, but it also helped that he didn't know how he wanted to react. Did he want to be angry that Mustang was here or did he want to be happy that the man that he was attracted to was here. He wasn't quite sure. 

"We were just waiting for you three to get here to start dinner." Gracia told them happily, leading them inside. Edward was the last to enter, silently wishing to turn around and run away to his dorm room. Steeling himself, he walked in after them, placing his stack of books where Gracia indicated for them to put them. 

"Big brothers!" Elysia cried upon spotting Ed and Al. She ran and collided with Edward's legs, hugging him as tightly as she could. Ed's mind flashed back to Nina and he gave a pained smile as he patted Elysia on the top of the head. 

"How are you, Elysia?" Al asked, kneeling so he could hug Elysia. Elysia transferred her hug from Edward to Al, hugging the cold suit of armor. 

"I helped mommy make dinner!" Elysia chimed. Edward smiled down at her, kneeling as well now. 

"That's good. And what did you and your mommy make?" he asked softly, ignoring the fact that everyone in the room was watching them. 

"Bread an' roast an' carrots an' peas an' chicken an' beans an' soup!" Elysia chimed out, smiling proudly up at her two "brothers". "An' I helped mommy make dessert too!" 

"And what's dessert?" Al asked, encouraging the young girl. 

"That's a se-cr-et!" Ed smiled again sadly as she said that. 

"You learned that from your daddy, huh?" Ed asked. Elysia nodded happily, then spotted the sad look on Ed's face. Her smile drooped and she gently touched Ed's cheek. 

"Big brother 'memberin', huh?" she asked. Ed forced a more cheerful smile but it had the opposite effect, making everyone else in the room even sadder at seeing that smile. 

"Its alright, Elysia. Sometimes it hurts to remember but it hurts even more to forget." Ed said, then swept the small girl into his arms, balancing her on his hip. "Now I remember you saying something about dinner and-" His growling stomach finished his sentence for him. 

Elysia's eyes widened as she heard his stomach growling so ferociously. "Big brother's really hungry!" Ed laughed at her words, making the others in the room wince internally as they heard the sad edge around the laugh. 

"Yep I am. Haven't eaten anything all day. Now, I think the foods this way," Edward began, purposely turning the wrong way. 

"No big brother! It's not that way! It's this way!" Elysia scolded. Edward blinked at the girl in mock surprise. 

"Are you sure? I'm positive that it's this way," he said, turning towards the front door. 

"No big brother! This way!" Elysia said, pointing. 

"Which way?" Ed asked, turning towards the bathroom. 

"This way! Big brother gets lost easily. Lemme show you!" Elysia said, forcing Edward to put her down and dragged him by the hand towards the dining room. 

His antics successfully cheered up everyone in the room. They were all quietly chuckling to themselves as they followed Edward and Elysia into the dining room. As they ate, everyone noticed that Edward was keeping to himself, occasionally entertaining Elysia or absentmindedly answering a question, but he mostly stared out the window. 

"Brother, what's wrong?" Al finally asked, trying to whisper quietly, but everyone heard still. They kept talking but they had quieted down slightly so they could hear Edward's response. Edward shook himself out of his thoughts and smiled convincingly at Al. 

"It's nothing Al. I just remembered that I have to call Auntie Pinako tomorrow." Ed replied. Al instantly became suspicious of him. Edward never called the Rockbells unless under dire threat. 

"Why?" he asked, staring down at his older brother. Ed sighed, returning to staring out the window. He knew that Al was suspicious of him since he never wanted to call the Rockbells, or rather he never wanted to call Winry, but he had a reason to and he wasn't afraid to tell Al, he just hated having to remind him of the date. 

"I need Auntie Pinako to put some flowers on mom's grave for us tomorrow. Tomorrow's the anniversary of her death." Ed replied, finishing off the last piece of roast on his plate. 

"Oh." Al said, mood crumbling. Ed noticed this and smiled at his brother. 

"Don't get sad, Al. Why be depressed the day before the anniversary? Besides, mom wouldn't want us to be sad. She would want us to continue on, being happy." Edward's words shocked everyone else at the table. Hadn't Edward just been sad a minute ago?

"But brother-" Al began but Ed cut him off. 

"But nothing, Al. You're going to continue on being happy and cheerful and you're not going to be depressed until tomorrow morning when we call Auntie Pinako and Winry. You can talk to Winry as long as you like after I finish talking to the witch." Ed wheedled slyly. If a suit of armor could blush, Al would definitely be blushing. 

"Really?" Al asked excitedly. Edward nodded, smiling sadly. 

"Really." 

"Big brother, you want pie?" Elysia asked, tugging on Edward's sleeve. Ed smiled down at her. 

"What kind of pie?" he asked. 

"Chocolate!" she chirped, having completely forgotten that she had wanted the type of pie it was to be secret. Ed grinned. 

"Hmmm… let me think. Do I want pie or not? Hmm… I think I'll have a piece of the secret chocolate pie!" Ed said and Elysia's eyes widened, remembering that it was supposed to be a secret. She then wagged her finger at Edward in a scolding manner. 

"You tricked me, big brother! No pie for you!" Edward pretended to pout. 

"Are you sure I can't have a piece of pie?" he asked, trying to look and sound sad. Apparently it worked because Elysia instantly nodded. 

"Don't be sad big brother! I'll go get you a piece!" she said and jumped up from her chair and ran towards the kitchen. Gracia began to stand up but Edward stopped her. 

"I'll go help her. After all, it's the least I can do after you made us such a nice meal." He said, following Elysia into the kitchen. 

He helped her cut up the two chocolate pies that Gracia had made and helped Elysia deliver a piece to everyone, except for Mustang, which didn't do unnoticed, before he carried both his and Elysia's pieces of pies back into the dining room for them to eat them. 

"Mommy! Mommy! I wanna learn how to do alchemy!" Elysia chirped excitedly. This caught everyone's attention and Edward quickly gulped down his pie. 

"Um, gotta go! Come on Al! We should be leaving now!" Ed said, trying to get Al to hurry up and come with him before Elysia ratted out what he had done while in the kitchen. It was something that he and Pinako had come up with when he was younger. It was the only alchemy that Pinako knew and was willing to use. 

"But brother, I want to hear why Elysia wants to learn alchemy." Al whined as Gracia asked her daughter this, her sharp eyes leveled on Edward. 

"Big brother clapped his hands and whoosh! All the dishes were clean! An' then he an' I put them away, but I don't think I wanna have a metal arm, though, brothers, 'cuz big brother broke some of the dishes and a cupboard door." Elysia solemnly informed everyone. Edward turned beat red. "But then he fixed them too! Alchemy is so cool!" 

"Well, now you heard so let's go Al. Oh man, I'm beat." Ed said, unconvincingly yawning and acting like he was tired. "We should head back to the dorms so I can sleep. Move Al, move!" 

Ed managed to get Al out of the Hughes's house before anyone could say anything directly to him about the cleaning of the dishes or the breaking of them. He had managed to gather up all of their books and leave while Al was bidding everyone a goodnight. Now out in the night air, Ed was finally relaxing, letting the night noises soothe him and allowing his eyes to relax for once. That was one thing that he hated about having to be up all day. The light hurt his eyes, especially at noon time which he normally tried to sleep past. 

"Brother that was awfully nice of you back there." Al said softly, walking beside his brother as they went. Ed shrugged. 

"Equivalent exchange Al. The Hughes made us dinner so I cleaned their dishes. It was nothing." Al was smiling internally at his brother's words. He was a big softie. 

As they showed up at the dorms, the little kitten that Al had found earlier finally woke up and released a plaintive mew. Ed winced, knowing that he had brought this upon himself even though he had forgotten about the stupid cat. 

Edward opened the door and leveled his brother with a look that had Al looking down in embarrassment. 

"You have three days to find it a new home." He replied evenly before carrying the books directly to the desk and began to read through them, pulling out a few pieces of paper to make notes on. Al watched him before following him in and taking the kitten out of his armor and placing it on his bed. 

"I think I'll name you Rose." Al said to the kitten. "I found you tangled up in the rose bushes so it's a fitting name, huh?" he asked it, which the cat seemingly mewed in agreement. Ed winced and diligently continued to work. 

At 3:48 am, Edward finally closed the book that he had been reading and stretched. He looked over at Al who was looking back at him, kitten curled up and asleep in his lap. 

"Are you going to go to bed now, brother?" Al asked softly, not wanting to wake the sleeping kitten. 

"Yeah. Wake me up at 8:30 so I can get to Mustang's office on time." Edward said, trudging over to his bed for sleep. As he curled up in his blankets, he realized that he needed to transfer everything that he had worked on into his little black book. 

"I'll do it in the morning." He mumbled to himself, dropping off into sleep land.

He never realized that he left it at the Hughes's home when he had been trying to get Al to leave earlier.

* * *

_How's that for a second update? Sorry it took so long to update. My laptop's motherboard gave out and everything that I had on it went bye bye, including the original chapter, so, sorry it took me so long to re-write it. But it's spring break now which means I can put off my homework which gave me time to work on this!_


	3. Chapter 2: Little Black Alchemy Book

**Chapter 2**

**Little Black Alchemy Book**

* * *

Edward groaned as he forced his eyelids to open. Al's absence from their dorm room was the first thing that he noticed. Squinting his eyes in irritability, he sat up, peering about the room. The stupid cat, Rose, was gone as well.

'Maybe he went to find it a new home.' Was his first thought, but dismissed it since Al would cling that the stupid fuzz ball as long as he could before Edward finally forced him to get rid of it. Sometimes it was more trouble than it was worth, making him get rid of the cat, but if he didn't then they would have too many cats in their dorm and pets weren't exactly allowed.

Yawning as he stretch, very much like a cat, he crawled on his hands and knees to peer at the alarm clock. It was 8:46 am. Ed's left eye began to twitch.

"Thanks for waking me up, Al." he growled sarcastically, jumping up and flying across the room towards the bathroom. He shucked off his pajamas, making sure to lock the bathroom door as he closed it, and quickly turned on the shower.

Once he was underneath of the scalding hot spray, he allowed his chimera form to flow forwards, making him sigh as all of his muscles finally relaxed. That was the one thing about being in his human form for so long, his muscles would bunch up after a while and would hurt until he finally transformed to his "natural" state.

"Natural my ass." Edward muttered darkly, pouring some shampoo into his hand. "Natural is what I was before that fucking man decided to fuck with me."

Memories began to surface as he showered, making his head and chest hurt. He remembered how Hoenhiem of Light would poke and prod him and his mother, doing experiments on their bodies, taking samples of their blood, and even hurting them to test their healing rate and at what capacity. He could even remember once when that man had accidentally called him 'Chimera' rather than Edward. That had really hurt him.

"Fucking bastard!" Edward snarled, punching the shower wall, cracking and shattering some of the tiles and putting a hole in the wall behind it. He quickly turned off the spray and jumped out, transforming back into his human form.

He ran out into the main part of the room and pulled on the same clothes that he had worn the day before, knowing that he had absolutely no clean clothes. He finished re-dressing in yesterday's clothes and ran back into the bathroom, quickly brushing and braiding his hair. After a moment's debate, he brushed his teeth quickly, mindful of the time.

He then ran back into the other room and pulled his boots on. He felt his pockets, trying to make sure that his little black alchemy book was where it was supposed to be and froze when he realized that it wasn't in any of the pockets of the clothes that he had worn yesterday. He double checked, putting his hands in all of his pockets and came up with nothing.

He shot over to his desk and searched underneath ever piece of paper and book, looked through every drawer and found nothing.

He began to breathe hard, his gold eyes darting around the room. What was in his black alchemy book was dangerous, illegal, immoral, and gad damn it all, it would change the course of the world entirely if anyone decrypted the first twenty pages. He had to find it! Work be damned, this was more important.

Edward quickly left the dorm room, accidentally leaving the door open and began to trace his and Al's footsteps from the previous night, searching everywhere for the little black alchemy book that held such dangerous information. Unwittingly, he ran straight past Winry, Al and Auntie Pinako, who also failed to notice him as their backs were turned when he ran past.

"What are you two doing here?" Al asked happily, picking Winry and Pinako up from the train. Winry had called that morning telling him that they had come for a visit and to come pick them up from the train station. It was because of this that Al had completely forgotten to wake Edward up. Maybe if he hadn't been in such a rush to pick up Winry and Pinako and as a result being half and hour early, he would have remembered to at least Edward a note saying that Gracia had called and said that Elysia had found a little black book the previous night and that Roy had it since they had recognized Edward's handwriting inside of it.

"We came for a visit, silly. And granny wanted to look at some new automail tools and material." Winry explained, looking around. "Where's Ed?"

All joy that Alphonse had been feeling crumbled at Winry's query of where his older brother was. Why did she have to like Edward and not him. His reaction caught Pinako's stern gaze, who catalogued it for later. She hadn't thought that Al was jealous of Ed, but that looked to be the case.

"He should be at Colonel Mustang's office reporting. We could go there and meet up with him." Al suggested cheerfully, burying his bad feelings, just wanting to enjoy Winry's undivided attention without his brother there to distract it.

"Alright." Winry agreed disappointment evident in her eyes. Pinako sighed in aggravation. She had been trying to nudge Winry's infatuation to the younger Elric but after that terrible transmutation in which resulted in Al being in incased in a suit of armor, her attention had immediately snapped back to the elder Elric.

"We'll stop and eat on the way." Pinako announced. "We haven't had breakfast yet and it would be rude to interrupt Edward while he's working."

Al's mood instantly sky rocketed and Winry's seem to darken a little more despite the happy smile on her face. Pinako just shook her head, the poor girl would never succeed in capturing the attention of the elder Elric, especially since Pinako knew for a fact that Edward had his sights set on a certain dark haired superior officer. Edward probably didn't remember telling her this, he had been drugged up at the time while she had fixed his ports, but he definitely had it bad for that Mustang of his.

Pinako couldn't help but smile when she remembered what she had seen in the back of that little black book of his. Oh yes, Edward definitely had it bad.

"There's a place around the corner where brother likes to eat. We could go there." Alphonse suggested.

"That sounds good, Al. Lead the way."

Else where, Edward was finally knocking on the door of the Hughes family. After several minutes, Gracia opened the door. Without even giving her a greeting or anything, he shot inside, looking everywhere where he had been the previous night.

"Big brother!" Elysia cried at seeing him, shot at him and hugged him around the legs, making him fall down. He hit his nose on the floor, making it bleed. Ignoring the gushing blood, he shoved Elysia off of him and continued searching for his precious book.

"Big brother?" Elysia asked, staring at her brother in confusion. She wasn't too hurt, she had seen her father behave in the same manner when she had hidden some of his paperwork that he brought home from work. That was always funny to watch.

"Ed, are you looking for a little black book?" Gracia asked, smiling. She then gasped when she saw the blood leaking from his nose. She quickly rushed over and began to clean it away like an overly affectionate mother. Edward shoved her away, his eyes wide with desperation.

"You know where it is?" he asked. "Where is it?"

"Roy has it. Ed, stay still, you're hurt. Elysia, go get mommy the medicine kit in the bathroom." Gracia instructed then glared daggers at Edward as he tried to get up and leave. "You stay put mister. You're hurt and you're not leaving until we get that bleeding stopped."

"But I'm late for work!" Edward tried desperately, but stopped when he saw the not amused look on her face. He sighed, feeling relieved that he knew where his book was, but now he was worried that Mustang had read it.

"If you really were worried about being late then you'd be there right now and not searching for you little book." Elysia then came trotting back with the kit. She smiled up at Ed, who gave her a slightly strained smile. As Gracia opened up the kit, she paused and gave Edward a confused look. "Didn't Al give you my message? I called this morning and told him that Roy had your book."

Her words settled in Edward's chest like a block of ice. Al had known where his book was? Why hadn't he left a note or something? He knew how much his book meant to him. He was positive that he would have seen a note when he had been tearing apart the room. There hadn't been one.

"No. He wasn't there when I woke up." Ed whispered. Gracia gave him a smile and patted his nee.

"I'm sure that there's a very good reason. Now this might hurt a little." Gracia said as she began to clean him up. Ed sat there, unfeeling, his mind running over all the reasons as to why Al wouldn't have told him about where his book was, and none of them were good.

"Oh, Edward, we need to take you to the hospital. Your nose is broken." Gracia murmured once she was done cleaning him up and had inspected the damage done to his nose.

"Doesn't matter. It's been broken before. I have to go. Thanks Gracia. Bye Elysia, I'll be back later to play." Edward said and left before Gracia had time to stop him. Watching him leave in the window with Elysia standing next to her, waving goodbye to her "big brother", Gracia couldn't help but give a little smile at his determination.

She then moved over to the phone, and after a moment's hesitation, she picked it up and dialed her husband's work number. After two rings, he picked up.

"Lieutenant Colonel Hughes speaking."

"Mrs. Lieutenant Colonel Hughes speaking." Gracia teased in reply, knowing that her husband's entire mood had just perked up.

"Honey! What can I do for you, my beautiful wife?" Maes asked, grinning. Gracia's eyes swept over the bloodstained rag on the table, a sad smile crossing her face.

"Maes, I need you to go over to Roy's office. Edward is heading there and he needs to go to the hospital. He broke his nose while he was over here looking for his black book." Gracia could just sense her husband growing serious on the other side of the phone.

"I thought you called and told him this morning that Roy has it?"

"I left a message with Al. Apparently he wasn't there when Ed woke up and he never got the message." She informed him sadly. She could sense her husband thinking on the other side. "What are you thinking?"

"I don't know. Ed was acting a little strange last night but Al told me that it was normal. I'm starting to think that it wasn't but maybe Al was just ignoring it?" Maes suggested, but then shook his head. "I don't know. I'll find out though. You said he broke his nose?"

"Yes, it's broken, and Ed said that he's had broken noses before. Maes, he didn't even notice the pain. He didn't even flinch when I was prodding it." Gracia informed him quietly. Maes's eyes widened. He had, had his nose broken once and it had hurt worse than the time he had broken his leg when he was eight.

"Don't worry, Gracia. I'll take care of everything." He assured her calmly through the phone. She smiled in relief.

"I know you will, Maes. Now get over to Roy's office."

There was a soft chuckle over the phone. "Don't worry, I'm leaving right now. I'll see you after work."

"Love you."

"Love you more."

"Bye Maes." Gracia laughed, hanging up on her husband, knowing that he would pout at the phone for a minute before going over to Roy's office.

Meanwhile, Edward was rushing through the streets towards his precious black book. Once again, he failed to notice when he ran past Alphonse, Winry and Pinako, but this time, they did see him.

"Was that Edward?" Winry asked, stunned, a forkful of eggs halfway to her mouth.

"I think so." Al said uncertainly. "He should be with the Colonel right now."

"Apparently he had some errands to run." Pinako muttered, sipping her tea. She knew that, that wasn't the case but she also wouldn't let those two go running after the boy.

"But what-" Winry began, standing up, but Pinako shot her a look.

"Finish your breakfast then we will head towards the office." Pinako said shortly, making Winry sit back down.

"Yes granny." she said in a rather dejected manner, pouting as she finished eating.

"Brother and I were going to call you guys today." Al said suddenly, distracting Winry from her food.

"Really?" she asked hopefully, and then frowned. "Wait, did Ed damage his automail again? If he did-"she began angrily, pulling a wrench out of her back pocket.

"No! No!" Al reassured her quickly. Pinako realized what he was talking about.

"Ed wanted me to put flowers on your mother's grave today since it's the anniversary. Am I correct, Al?" Pinako asked. Winry seemed to wilt and Alphonse nodded.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I already placed some flowers on her grave and apologized that none of us would be there for the anniversary. I'm sure that wherever your mother is, she understands."

Alphonse felt relieved and gladdened by her words. She always made him feel better about his mother's death when even Edward didn't. Sometimes he got so mad with Edward for seeming to have forgotten or not even care about their mother's passing, but there were times, like last night, when he realized that Edward kept it all locked up since he did care, why else would he have insisted on them bringing their mother back from the dead?

"Finish your breakfast, Winry."

Edward was running through the halls, occasionally bumping into other people who would yell at him, but he was in too much of a hurry to hear or even really notice them. There was something else in that book than alchemic ideas and formulas, in the back there were a couple of pages where he had gotten really bored and had doodled hearts with Mustang's name in them. He was such a fool. Hopefully Mustang hadn't seen those.

When he finally rounded that last corner, he shot into the office where Hawkeye, Falman, Breda, Fuery, and Havoc were all busy working for once. They stared at him in surprise as he shot across the room and kicked Mustang's office door open.

Edward frantically searched through the office, seeing that Mustang wasn't there. He shot over to the desk and began to tear it apart, desperately searching for that black book. Papers were flying about the room in result of his desperate search.

The others quickly made their way to the office door and watched the commotion. Finally, angry that Edward was ruining her careful stacks and giving Roy a suitable reason not to do paperwork all day, Riza pulled out her gun and fired it at Edward, hitting the wall behind.

Edward didn't even notice. He kept searching for it, emptying out the drawers and searching through everything he dumped out. Riza fired three more times, which he ignored. Once the entire desk was torn apart, he looked up at his audience and spotted Mustang in the back, watching him in amusement.

"YOU BASTARD!" Edward screeched, flying over the desk, across the room, through the crowd of his coworkers, and slammed into Mustang, pinning him to the wall. "WHERE THE HELL IS IT, YOU FUCKING BASTARD?!"

"Where's what, Fullmetal? And I thought I told your brother that you needed to be here at 9:00. It's 10:15." Mustang grinned, his eyes flickering to the clock on the wall behind Riza's desk.

"Where's my book?" Edward growled viciously. He pressed his automail blade into Mustang's shoulder, making the Colonel realize that Edward had transmuted his arm sometime before he was shoved into the wall. Quickly the situation became serious.

"What are you going to do, Fullmetal? Stab me? Assault on a superior officer doesn't tend to look to well." Roy began, his eyes turning hard. "It might cause people to begin looking a bit more closely at your past."

"And I might have to shove my blade more closely to your arm socket, permanently crippling you unless you give me back what's mine." Edward snarled. He heard the click of Riza's gun as she cocked it.

"What makes you think I have this book of yours?" Roy asked, also having heard the click of the hammer of Riza's gun.

"Because Gracia told me." Edward snarled. "Now give it back."

"What about equivalent exchange?" Roy began, a grin crossing his face.

Right then Maes came into the room and froze at the sight of what was going on. Edward had Roy pinned to the wall, his automail arm transmuted into a blade and pressing into his shoulder while Riza was aiming her gun at Edward with the rest of the office staff watching from behind the woman with the gun.

"Whoa! What's going on here?" Maes began, then turned back towards Edward. "Ed, Gracia called and said that you need to go to the hospital. She said that your nose is broken."

"I don't need to go to the hospital. All I need is my fucking book! NOW WHERE IS IT, BASTARD?" Edward screamed into Roy's face. Maes's eyes widened.

"Roy, I thought you went to give him his alchemy book last night." Maes said. Roy ignored him.

"How about it, Fullmetal? Equivalent exchange? You make your reports clearer and I give you back your book? Sounds fair to me." Roy's eyes flicked over to Maes. "Otherwise I might have to give your little book over to the investigation squad and have them investigate all the human alchemy that fills up your little book. Really Fullmetal, thought you would have learned that-" Mustang's eyes widened and yelled as Edward's blade pierced his shoulder, sinking in about half an inch.

Riza fired her gun, missing Roy and Ed's head by less then an inch. Both of them ignored it. Riza yelled out a warning to Edward, to release their superior office, which went ignored by the two men. Maes caught Riza's attention and shook his head, telling her to stand down. This was something that they couldn't interfere with.

"You read my book?" he growled, yellow eyes flashing animalistic-ally, and for the first time Roy realized that he wasn't in control. If fact, he realized just how out of control he was and just how serious Edward was about this. Edward had just stabbed him and was still pursuing the subject. He had apparently misjudged this entire situation. He had never expected Edward to feel this seriously about this.

"Your book is in my left pocket." Roy said softly. Edward snarled and released him, but he didn't pull out his blade. Without Edward's strength pinning him to the wall, he fell forward on Edward's blade which made it sink in about an inch. He hissed in pain, doing his best to hold still.

"How much of this did you read?" Edward demanded. Roy was too busy concentrating on the pain to take notice to his question. Edward slammed him up against the wall, forcing Roy to look him in the eyes, and what he saw there terrified him.

"HOW MUCH DID YOU READ?" Edward screamed. Roy winced.

"I read everything. Your human alchemy ideas, they're ingenious and I don't understand why you don't use them. The first twenty pages, though, that must have been when your mother died, they didn't make any sense. They wouldn't to anyone but a child." Edward's eyes glowed as he saw the unspoken words in Roy's eyes. He had seen the last page. He knew.

"Fuck you!" he snarled, withdrawing his blade and ran so fast out of the room that he almost seemed to vanish into thin air.

"What was that about, sir?" Riza demanded as Roy slumped to the floor. Roy's hand went to his shoulder, trying to stifle the bleeding.

"I played with fire and just got burned." Roy replied. Riza spotted the blood dripping from his fingers and onto the floor.

"We need to take you to the hospital." She began but Roy stopped her.

"No. If I go to the hospital then I would need to report him and I won't do that. This was completely my fault, I should have known better than to taunt the boy with his past." Roy said, causing everyone in the office to still at his words. Maes was suddenly at Roy's side, pressing a handkerchief against his shoulder. Roy winced at the pressure but knew that it was helping.

"What was in his book? Well we looked at it last night all I saw were arrays and doodles." Maes said, briefly pulling away the handkerchief to peer at the wound. He grimaced. "You need stitches."

"There were notes on human alchemy. On how to bring his mother back to life." Roy muttered.

"And you had no business reading his alchemy journal." A new, elderly voice broke in. Everyone turned to see Al standing in the doorway with Winry and an elderly woman whom none of them had never seen or met, with the exception of Roy. Roy sat up quickly, moving to hold the handkerchief against his own shoulder.

"And who are you?" Havoc demanded, lighting up a new cigarette since he had dropped his last one when Edward had slammed Roy into the wall.

"Mrs. Rockbell," Roy began, but she shut him up with a glare.

"You read through that boy's secrets didn't you?" she demanded. Roy winced. "I may have forgiven you for what you did to my family before, but this I don't think I can." Roy bowed his head.

"What are you talking about, Granny?" Winry asked, shocked. Pinako ignored her as she strode over to Roy and pulled away the handkerchief, inspecting the wound.

"You big baby, it's only a flesh wound, nothing compared to what that boy's experienced. I remember a time one of the town boys stabbed him repeatedly with a pocket knife because Edward made a better one with his alchemy. Took me an hour to stitch him up and the boy didn't cry once. He was only four when that happened." Pinako announced, forcing Roy to stand up. "This'll only take a couple of minutes to stitch."

Roy peered incredulously down at the short woman who had such a stern look about her. "Why are you helping me? I murdered your son and daughter." Roy said, once again shocking everyone in the room but Maes who had recognized the name Rockbell from the reports of Roy being forced to execute them back in the Ishbal war.

"Like I said, I forgave you for that. You were forced by the stupid military and you came to my doorstep and apologized to me, even gave me a gun to kill you with. Besides, I won't turn away a patient even if I wished death upon them. I made an oath with my children to never leave a patient to suffer if they come to us for help." Pinako explained. Roy looked away, still feeling ashamed of himself.

"Now get into your office where I stitch you up in private." Pinako said, leading him into his own office. Once he was in, she stuck her head back out and glared at Al and Winry. "You two will be here when I'm finished. You will not go after Edward, he needs time to himself. He'll come back when he's ready."

'And not feral.' She thought to herself, shutting and locking the door. She turned back to Mustang and studied his office. Papers were everywhere, his desk looked ransacked, and his chair was on its side four feet from his desk. 'Looks like Ed was here.'

"Sit in the chair." Pinako ordered, ignoring the fact that the chair was so large that he would need two hands to pick it up. She just walked over to the previously cleared desk and set her bag on it. That was one thing she had learned a long time ago when dealing with the Elrics, never go visit them without medical equipment on hand.

She pulled out a bottle of disinfectant, thick stitching thread, a thick needle, scissors, cotton, gauze, and a candle. She turned to look at Mustang. "You're the fire alchemist, light the candle." She ordered.

"I don't have my gloves." Roy informed her. "Otherwise I would have used them to defend myself against Edward."

She scoffed at his words. "From my point of view, he was defending himself against you."

Roy winced again at her true words, knowing that there wasn't any way that he could have argued with her. He had told Maes that he would swing by the Elrics' dorm room and give Edward his book, but he hadn't. Instead, he had taken it home and read through the entire thing. Parts of it had confused him, like when there were occasional references made towards animals, mostly felines, but then he finally figured that Edward was experimenting with his ideas on the cats that Al kept bringing home. But when he had finished reading all the alchemy parts, he had just flipped through the pages and found the doodles in the back. That had been a shock for him, and then he had thought that it would be fun to blackmail Edward with his book since Edward would probably do anything to keep him from finding out his secret. He wouldn't have stopped at the more legible reports and Edward knew that.

"How much of his book did you read?" Pinako demanded, pulling out a box of matches and lighted the candle. Roy sat down, watching her set up her tools, ignoring the blood dribbling down his side from his wound.

"All of it."

"Then you know that he's in love with you." She replied calmly, threading the needle and snipping off the correct length of string that she needed. Roy looked at her in surprise.

"You know?" he asked. "I figured that, that was something that he wouldn't ever tell anyone."

"He confessed while drugged and I've flipped through his book myself." she admitted, making Roy straighten up.

"If you've done it yourself, then you have no right-"

"I didn't read through his book maliciously. I was looking at his notes for one of his arrays that reduce scar tissue. The scar tissue around his ports keeps growing into his automail and damaging it. It's very painful for him and its hard work for me to fix his ports and automail. Before we asked Al if we could use it, I wanted to make sure that his research was correct and that it wouldn't have any detrimental affects on his body." explained Pinako not in the mood for this.

"Why would you need Al to approve it?" he demanded, confusion evident on his face. Pinako sighed as she poured some disinfectant on the cotton.

"Strip." She ordered. Roy removed his outer coat and his button-up shirt. Pinako began to clean the wound, considering whether or not she should answer Roy. Finally, she decided as she pulled back.

"While Edward was recovering from losing his arm and leg and getting his automail, he was constantly drugged up on painkillers that were so strong that he didn't know left from right, up from down, night from day, he was as confused as you could possibly get without passing out. Well, Alphonse took advantage of his disorientation and tricked a promise out of him several times that he would never again perform any form or kind of human alchemy, or alchemy used on a living person, ever again. When Edward was off the painkillers, Alphonse reminded him of his promises and forced him to keep them." Pinako explained. "The scar tissue reduction array, it's a form of human alchemy and Edward didn't want to break his promise to his little brother."

Roy couldn't help but feel surprised by this little tale. Alphonse didn't seem the type to do such a thing and he said as much. Pinako, busy heating up the needle with the candle, snickered at this.

"There's a lot more to Alphonse than you think. He's got you completely suckered into his 'I can do no harm' act, hasn't he?" Pinako asked. Roy's jaw dropped. It was all an act?!

"Wh-wh-what?" he spluttered. Pinako frowned.

"Well, it's not entirely an act. This might hurt a bit." She said, piercing his skin with the needle and began to neatly and expertly stitch him up. "He really is a sweet boy, but even though he's a suit of armor now, he is human still. He still feels love, hatred, jealousy, sorrow, all of those emotions and more. And it's because he's human and feels these emotions; he'll also act on them."

"After they tried to bring their mother back to life, Al was indeed worried about Edward, but he was also angry. I was too shocked by what they had done at the time to see it, but looking back, it was obvious if I had been paying attention. He got that agreement out of Edward for revenge along with his worry for his brother's welfare." Pinako paused for a moment and looked Roy in the eye. "Their father, he was an alchemist too, you're aware, had nothing but books on human alchemy in his study. Those are the books that Ed and Al learned from. There were some books with regular alchemy, those were the books that Al learned from, but Edward, he learned solely from those human alchemy books. Human alchemy was all he knew and Alphonse knew it. Edward knew little to nothing that was practical even though he is indeed a prodigy. That's why Edward has his little black alchemy book that he doesn't let anyone, not even Al, read. It's to deal with his ideas that he knows that he can never see if they truly work, to have an outlet for the alchemy that he knows best but can't use."

"You mean he- Ah!" Roy yelped when Pinako went back to stitching. "He tried to cut Edward off from alchemy?" he managed to get through with his teeth gritted.

"In a way. He wanted Edward to fix him, to get him back to his own body, he kept saying that Edward would fix him when he was better while he was recovering, but how he expected Edward to fix him while cutting him off from the only alchemy he knew and would fix him, I don't know. Al does have a mean bone in him, quite a few actually, but he keeps them well hidden and normally keeps his temperament easy so others don't know." Pinako paused. "Al mentioned that Edward was supposed to be here when he picked us up from the train station this morning. Why is it that he only did this just a few minutes ago?" Pinako asked, finishing up her last stitch and tying it. Roy groaned, letting his head rest against the back of the chair before looking at Pinako again.

"He was late. I told Alphonse to tell him to be here at 9:00 this morning. He was an hour late for work." Mustang said. Pinako considered his words as she brought the gauze over to wrap his shoulder.

"Apparently Al didn't tell Edward. I'm also betting that Al purposely didn't tell Edward that we were arriving today as well."

"Why would he do that?" Roy asked, confused as to why she was telling him all of this.

"Because he's jealous of Edward. Alphonse is in love with Winry, but Winry is in love with Edward. Edward, though, is in love with you, which you know, and you hurt him." Pinako looped it right back around to the Edward being in love with him. Roy shook his head and turned to stare out the window. Pinako watched him as she finished wrapping him up then returned to her bag and tools, cleaning them up and packing them back up.

"I've heard that you're quite the ladies man." Pinako murmured. Roy glanced at her.

"Edward's underage. And he's a boy!" he exclaimed.

"As soon as he was accepted into the military his status became a legalized adult. I checked."

"But he's a boy!" Roy continued. Silence fell on them as she finished packing everything away. She then pulled out her pipe, packing then lighting it. She puffed on her pipe for a few minutes, watching him, considering.

"What I'm about to share with you goes no further then between the two of us. If it does, Mr. Mustang, you will meet with the fury of not only me, but two other individuals who make Edward look like nothing more than a kitten and have absolutely no qualms with killing members of the military. Do you understand?" Roy nodded his assent and watched as Pinako strode over to the window to stare down at the grounds below.

"This is something that very few know about. Not even Alphonse knows of this. This is a secret that has been kept by myself and two others, it was kept by Edward's mother and father. Not even Winry knows of this secret." Pinako glanced at him. "Edward is not a boy."

Silence fell onto the room.

"That's impossible! Of course he's a boy! His chest is flat. If he was a girl then he would have breasts!"

"He wraps his chest to keep people from finding out. And I never said that he was a girl."

Her words brought his brain to a complete and total stop. He wasn't a boy or a girl? Then what the hell was Edward Elric?

"He's both male and female. It's a rare condition called hermaphroditism in the person, most commonly called a hermaphrodite, has both male and female parts. In some cases it can be as simple as having a penis and a set of breasts, or it could be as severe as Edward's case in which he has a set of breasts, a penis, a vaginal opening, a set of testicles and ovaries. He has all the male parts and all the female parts. Trisha, Edward's mother, decided to raise him as a boy, and they kept it secret, from even Al. Trisha explained that she wanted Al believing that his brother was normal, not a freak."

Roy sat there for a minute, hands clenching and unclenching. He remembered how Edward had seemed to be worried about the physical back when he had been taking his tests, at the time he had thought he had been worried about Al, but obviously that hadn't been all that he had been worried about.

"What do you want me to do?" Roy finally asked, already anticipating what she was going to tell him to do. She shocked him though by not telling him to give Edward a chance. Instead she told him to talk to him.

"That's all you want me to do? Is to talk to him?" Roy asked, staring at her. She nodded, still puffing away at her pipe.

"Talk to him as he is. He's going to be hiding away all day. When it gets dark, he'll most likely be in a park, or somewhere where there are a lot of plants and not a whole lot of people. Back in Risembool, he liked the local playground, I'm figuring a park or a playground is where he'll be tonight." Pinako grabbed her bag and headed towards the door. She paused with her hand on the doorknob.

"Edward and Trisha have always had a lot in common. It's just another similarity that they both fell in love with men that hurt them. This is your only chance not to be like Hoenhiem of Light, to prove that you're not a bad man but rather good. If Edward can come to me with a legitimately broken heart or with a healed one, I will forgive you, if not then I'll be calling the two people I mentioned earlier who'll want to be having some words with you. Have a good day, Mustang, and I hope you go talk to him tonight, for your sake."

She then left the room, leaving him to his thoughts.

* * *

There. You guys like that? It was a bit more fast paced than I had originally planned for this story, but as I'm sure those of you who write knows, stories tend to take a life of their own as you write them. So tell me what you guys think.


	4. Chapter 3: Relationships

**Chapter 3**

**Relationships**

* * *

Roy could see Edward sitting on the park bench not even a yard ahead. His hair was undone, falling in waves around him, very much unlike his usual braid that was always perfect without a hair out of place. For the first time in his life since Edward had joined the military, Roy didn't see a pawn, a lower ranking officer, the Fullmetal Alchemist. No, right now as he stared at Edward, he saw a very beautiful person, not a woman or a man, but a beautiful person.

Steeling himself for another assault like earlier, Roy approached Edward, doing his best not to disturb him. Edward knew who it was that was approaching but he didn't do anything, he just stared down at the dirt beneath his feet. He was surprise though when Roy sat down next to him, but he still didn't say anything or move.

They just sat there for the longest time, neither of them moving or speaking. Finally, Roy dug in his pocket and pulled out four very small pieces of papers that were all covered with doodles of hearts with a name repeated in each heart. He stared at them for a minute before offering them to Edward.

"How long have you had a crush on me?" Roy finally asked. Edward was silent. Roy sighed.

"Pinako Rockbell, she lectured me for a long time today." This caught Edward's attention. He turned to glare at Roy.

"Why'd you call her?" he demanded. Roy then remembered Pinako's words earlier about Al and how she was assuming that he hadn't even told Edward that they had been arriving that day. Roy rubbed his eyes.

"Looks like she was right. It looks like Alphonse didn't tell you that they were coming today. Mrs. Rockbell and her granddaughter arrived with Al just minutes after you left the office earlier. She stitched me up, in fact. While she did so, she lectured me." Roy leaned back, his dark eyes watching Edward as Edward watched him. "She told me about your condition."

Edward froze before quickly looking away. She had told him about him being a chimera? But she hadn't ever told anyone before! How could she-

"She told me about how you're both male and female." Roy finished. Edward relaxed a little before tensing again. She had told him about that?!

"What? I'm female now so now I'm fuckable?" Edward demanded, making Roy wince. He knew that he had a womanizer reputation, but he very rarely ever took a woman home with him; much less have intercourse with them. He did on rare occasions, but it only happened once every couple months, not every night like most people seemed to assume.

"No, but if we decide to try a relationship, it would be easier." Roy explained, leaning forwards so his elbows rested on his knees. "In the military, same sex relationships are heavily frowned upon, and for a commanding officer to share a relationship with one of his subordinates who's of the same sex, its career suicide. There's paperwork that you have to fill out when you're going to have a relationship with someone else in the military, if you don't then there is suspension, and possible dismissal from the military. Its how they make sure that sexual favors aren't being given and received for things such as leeway, promotions, and raises in wages, that sort of thing."

"Oh," Edward said, blinking rapidly. He hadn't known any of this. Roy glanced at him and smiled.

"Yeah." He turned back to stare at nothing, thinking about what to say next.

"Despite my reputation as a womanizer, I do like men as well. Occasionally I'll go on a date with a man outside of the military, but those dates are usually low key since they're few and far between. I have a lot of plans for my future and I don't want to have any doors shut on me just because of the person I want to go to bed with, so I created the womanizer image so any rumors of my being with a man would instantly be disregarded as a myth." Roy turned towards Edward, and unable to help himself, he ran his fingers through Edward's hair, causing the boy to relax and give a blissful smile. "If we decide to pursue a relationship with one another, I would fill out the paperwork with you as a girl. It's unlikely, but it might leak out about your condition. Would you be alright with that?"

Edward was quiet for a minute. He stared back down at his boots again, his thoughts tumbling about his head in a very unorganized manner, which was unusual for him. Normally his thoughts were nice, neat and very organized, and he normally had every possibility and option planned out, but he had never thought that he would have a chance to pursue a relationship with Mustang.

Edward stood up and rubbed his face. He winced as he stretched and turned to look at Mustang.

"Can we go somewhere more private to continue this?" he asked. Roy stood up and walked towards him.

"Why? Where would you like to go?"

"I want to unwrap my fucking chest. You have no idea how god damned uncomfortable it is. I just want to go somewhere where no one'll see that I got boobs." Edward complained. Roy blushed at his words but couldn't help but understand. He was sure that it was uncomfortable to have your chest wrapped, but he also couldn't help but want to see actual proof that Edward was indeed part female.

"We can go to my house, if you want." He suggested, watching Edward's face for a reaction. After a moment's hesitation, Edward nodded and they set off towards Roy's house, neither of them speaking along the way.

The thoughts going through Edward's head was like a whirlwind if not a tornado. Every pro and con of getting together with Roy rushed through his head. His memories of his mother wasting away, the fact that chimeras mate for life, the fact that Roy didn't know that he was a chimera and thus mated for life all flashed through his head. They were all daunting and very real, but the fact was, was that Edward loved Roy very much and he didn't want a chance to be with the man he loved pass him by.

Before he knew it, they were at Roy's house. Roy pulled a key from underneath of his doormat, winking at Edward as he did so, and unlocked the door to his house. As they walked in, Roy pulled out his gloves, put them on and snapped six times. After each snap, a candle was lit until the room was illuminated by the six candles.

Edward couldn't help but smile at this. The candle light was a lot easier on his eyes than artificial light, it was just so much like Mustang to light his house using his favorite form of alchemy. He grinned up at the older man, who was taking off his gloves as he looked back at him.

"Show off." He said.

"Cheaper than electricity." Roy informed him. Edward then turned back to the room to examine it.

The walls were s light beige color with thick, heavy curtains covering the window that were a red brown color. The couches and chairs were made of leather, matching the color of the drapes, while the in-tables and the coffee table were made of a dark brown wood. The floors were a cherry red color, accentuating the rest of the room so it blended it, especially since beige colored pillows rested on the couches.

"Have someone else decorate for you?" Edward asked lightly, striding into the room and plopping onto Roy's couch. He instant sank into the soft leather couch, surprisingly, and instantly he never wanted to get back up again. Despite the early hour for him, he was ready to go to sleep then and there.

"Maes and Gracia decided that they wanted to decorate my house as a welcome home present." Roy replied stiffly, trying to ignore Edward's snickers. He followed across the room and sat next to Edward who was doing his best to cuddle into the couch so he would never have to get up again.

"Figures. You have no taste."

"How do you figure?" demanded Roy, staring at the blonde boy next to him. Edward pulled a beige pillow towards him and cuddled it into his chest.

"Because you're wearing black socks with a blue and white uniform."

Edward's reply stunned Roy. How did the little blonde boy know that he was wearing black socks?

"Se-cr-et!" Edward chimed, imitating Elysia from the previous night, having guessed Roy's next question. Unconsciously, Edward began to paw at the pillow that he was cuddling like a cat did when content. Roy noticed this though and found it really quite adorable. He always saw the similarities between Ed and the kittens that Al seemed to adore.

"You're so cute." Roy whispered, running his fingers through Ed's hair. Ed began to purr in contention, causing Roy to smile again. He leaned down and placed a chaste kiss on Ed's lips, pulling away after a moment and smiling at the Fullmetal Alchemist who had allowed his eyes to fall shut during the kiss.

"Roy," Edward whispered. Roy's eyes narrowed happily and he dove back in, capturing Edward's lips in a sensual kiss.

Ed slowly transferred his hands from the pillow to Roy's shoulders, enjoying the smell and feel of Roy against him, around him, kissing him. Roy's hand fell from Edward hair to his sides, finding their way underneath of the tight black t-shirt. Roy began to lap at Edward's lips much like a kitten would milk as his fingers began to caress little circles on his sides, making him gasp and allowing Roy the entrance that he desperately wanted. Roy began to expertly explore Edward's warm mouth, enjoying it when Edward would give him a few tentative licks in return. He groaned and hauled Edward into his laps, coxing Ed to put his tongue in his mouth, which Edward complied with. It was Edward's turn to groan as Roy began to suck enthusiastically on his tongue, enjoying the sensations that were being sent to his brain.

Finally, they both withdrew from each other, breathing in the air that they so desperately needed. Roy chuckled when he saw Edward's flushed face, loving how innocent he looked and probably was. Edward, on the other hand, got angry when he heard Roy's chuckle.

"What? Was it that bad? Well it's not my fault that, that was my first kiss!" Edward snarled, about to get off Roy's lap, but Roy's tight hold on him stopped him. He could easily break out of his hold, but then his escape might give away his chimera secret.

"That was your first kiss?" Roy whispered, moving to nuzzle Edward's neck. Edward nodded, relaxing as he felt Roy nuzzle him. His mother had used to do that to him when they were in their chimera forms, not in a sexual manner like Roy was, but god it brought back good memories and made him relax.

"Mmm, it was a very good kiss, a very delicious kiss." Edward pressed up against him, enjoying not only his touch but his words as well.

"Roy!" yelped Edward when Roy nipped at the junction where his neck and shoulder met. Suddenly, Roy realized where this was going and drew away from the little bundle in his lap. He then chuckled at his thoughts, knowing that Edward would scream, yell and throw an all around fit if he knew that he had referred to him as 'little' even in his own thoughts.

After a couple of minutes, Edward whimpered as he pressed himself closer to Roy. All of his instincts were telling him to mate with this man, that he was a good dominate and that he would take good care of him.

"Why'd you stop?" Edward growled his voice deeper than usual. What Edward hadn't realized yet was that he had begun to change into his animal form. His fangs had begun to elongate, his hair was creeping down his spine, making a little trail, and his muscles had stiffened and become a little firmer.

"Not the first night, Ed." Roy whispered. "And I won't take your virginity. Not until you're ready, at least, and you're not ready."

Suddenly, Edward's human side started kicking in. All thoughts of mating flew to the back of his mind and he remembered his mother, that Roy didn't know he was a chimera, and most importantly, Al didn't know that he was interested in men.

"Sorry," Ed apologized, starting to move away but Roy stopped him, pulling him closer so he could snuggle with him.

"Don't be sorry. We're both a little out of the water right now." Edward snickered at this, confusing Roy. "What's so funny?"

"Thought you hated water, thought it rendered your alchemy useless." Edward teased, making Roy growl in amusement. He pinched Edward playfully, making Ed give a rather embarrassing squeak. Roy blinked at him.

"Did you just squeak?"

"I did not!" Edward replied, his face turning as red as a tomato. Roy grinned.

"You did too!"

"Did not." Roy pinched him again, making him squeak and wriggle away from the pinching fingers.

"That's so cute." Roy murmured, making Edward snarl.

"I AM NOT CUTE!"

"I beg to differ."

Ed released another squeak but for an entirely different reason. Roy had stood up with the boy in his arms, whirled around and now had Edward pinned to the couch. Roy initiated another kiss with Ed, making the famed alchemist moan. He eventually pushed Roy away, a sad look in his eyes. He tried to catch his breath but winced.

"Okay, time out." Edward demanded, forcing Roy to get off of him. "Where's your bathroom?"

"Um, down the hall. Why?" Roy asked, pointing. Edward growled and stormed down the hall, looking for the bathroom. When he found it, he went in and closed the door without turning on the light.

Roy sat on the couch for five minutes, impatient for Edward to return. All the while, thoughts ran through his head. Did he do something wrong? Had he hurt him in some way? Why did he need to go to the bathroom? Was he not alright with their relationship? Or maybe they weren't in a relationship yet and that was his problem? Was he pushing something that wasn't going to happen?

Edward finally came out of the bathroom and Roy instantly noticed the different. He chuckled to himself, remembering Edward saying something about unwrapping his chest. Edward stood in front of him, and after a moment of hesitation, sat down in Roy's lap, cuddling up to his superior officer.

"I think I like you better this way." mused Roy after a moment. Edward glared at him.

"What? Because I look more like a girl?" he demanded, growling deeply. Roy shook his head.

"No, because this is the real you and I'm one of the lucky few to have ever seen it."

Edward flushed at his words. That he had not been expecting. That had been so romantic, so smooth, it was unlike the Roy Mustang that he knew. His eyes then narrowed.

"Quit using your smooth talking on me, Mustang. I'm on to you." Roy barked out in laughter at this, surprised that Edward had said such a thing.

"I'm not trying to smooth talk you. I'm telling the truth. You're beautiful, Edward Elric, whether you believe it or not."

Edward looked away, not wanting or willing to believe Roy's words. He instantly wished that Roy hadn't ever muttered them. He wasn't beautiful, he wasn't normal. He was a freak that was a chimera masquerading as a human. How could something like he be beautiful?

"Edward," Roy began, seeing the rejection in his eyes, but then Edward smiled convincingly at him, making him swallow what he was about to say. His eyes flickered over to the clock and noticed that it was 2:13 am.

"Edward," he began again. "It's late. Do you want to go back to your dorm or do you want to stay here with me?"

Edward bit his lower lip, weighing the consequences of going back to the dorm where Al was most likely waiting to chew him out or stay the night with Roy and the possibility of mating. Roy sensed his indecision and ran his fingers soothingly through Edward's hair. He didn't want Ed to leave.

"If you spend the night, nothing will happen. Not until you're ready." Roy promised. Edward then whispered something that Roy didn't quite hear. "What was that Ed?"

Edward swallowed and then repeated the sentence that he had only said once to one person ever before. "I don't want what killed my mom to kill me."

Roy's brow furrowed at his words. Edward's mother died from a strange disease that was unknown and had quickly taken her life. Why would Edward think that he was going to happen to him?

"What are you talking about?"

"Mom didn't die of a disease. It was a lie that we told Al and everyone else. Mom died because he left, she died because he wasn't there to love her. I don't want to love you and have you leave me like he did her. I don't want to die because you're not there to love me." confessed the Fullmetal Alchemist. Roy felt his heart breaking at his words and cuddled Edward closer to him.

"We'll take everything slow, I promise. I won't leave you unless you want me to." promised Roy, which made Edward a little angry.

"Don't make promises that you don't know that you can keep!"

"I'm not. Until you tell me to go to hell, I'll love you in whatever manner you want me to love you as. I'll love you as a lover, I'll love you as a friend, I'll even love you as your superior officer. I won't leave you, Ed. I promise."

Right then, Roy made up Ed's mind for him. He was going to stay the night with him. What Ed didn't know was that Roy's words made more of an impact on him than he knew.

* * *

The next morning at the office, the entire mood was tense. No one was able to concentrate enough on work, but for the sake of appearance's sake, they all pretended to be working while Al sat in a chair next to Breda's desk, Winry sat next to Hawkey's desk, quietly working on an automail arm that she had brought especially for Ed since it was more durable than the one he had now. In the corner next to Havoc's desk sat Pinako, quietly puffing away on her pipe, staring out the window.

The few people who came into the office to deliver or pick up papers could feel the tension and would leave as quickly as they could to get away from it. Rumors quickly spread throughout Central headquarters that something was going on up there and that if anyone knew what was good for them, they'd stay out of it.

After 11:00, Hawkeye began to get a little twitchy. Mustang was three and a half hours late for work. Occasionally he was a little late for work, and there had been times when he was an hour late, but at those times he would call in and give them forewarning. Today though, there had been no call.

Everyone else also notice that Mustang was late. They had all also noticed that Edward had failed to show up as well. No one had seen him since the incident yesterday. No one at the library could recall seeing him, no one at restaurants could remember seeing him, no one in the cafeteria could remember seeing him, no one in the food market could remember seeing, and no one from the town's law enforcement could even remember seeing him. And that was worrying.

"Miss Hawkeye," Alphonse spoke up, breaking the tense silence. "Do you think you could call the police station one more time? Maybe there was a mistake earlier and they really do have brother in a holding cell."

"Alphonse, I've called them three separate times already, Havoc's called them twice, and Falman even went to check their cells at nine. Edward's not there." Hawkeye said sternly, a sad glint in her eye.

"Sorry." Alphonse murmured.

"GIMME BACK MY DONUT!" a shrill scream broke their silence.

"It's my donut now, Fullmetal!" another yell broke the silence.

"YOU BASTARD!"

BOOM

Both Mustang and Edward came rushing into the room, Roy holding a donut well above Edward's head who was desperately trying to grab it.

"You're not getting this donut as punishment for making us late for work!" Roy growled.

"I made us late?! You're the one who overslept! I should never have stayed the night at your house!" Edward snarled, leaping up for his donut and missing it by a few inches when Roy jerked away.

"If you hadn't insisted on staying up so late!" Roy growled back, stopping himself as he realized that they were in the office. "Then I would have remembered to set my alarm clock!"

"Bullshit! I had nothing to do with it! Ah-ha!" Edward cried, finally grabbing the donut. He then ran into Roy's office with it, quickly devouring his prize.

"Get back here!" Roy bellowed, running in after the blonde, slamming the door behind him.

The two of them never knew that they left an entire room full of stunned people with the exception of one. Pinako stood up and began to walk towards the door.

"I told you the boy would be just fine once he had some time to himself. Now come along Al, Winry, we have some shopping to do." Pinako ordered. Al cast a longing look towards the door, as did Winry, but both of them knew better then to disobey the elderly woman.

"Yes ma'am." They chimed. Winry packed up everything that she had been working on and Al stood up and walked towards the door.

"Miss Hawkeye, can you tell brother that I'll be back before 4:00 pm and we can all go to dinner together?" Al asked. Hawkeye gave him one swift nod, which if Al hadn't been incased in a suit of armor, he would have smiled. "Thank you."

Riza waited for fifteen minutes before she collected up a stack of paper work that Mustang needed to sign. After a quick rap on his office door, she opened it and strode in without waiting for a reply. As she walked in, her eyes strayed to the couch where one Edward Elric was fast asleep, soft snores could faintly be heard coming from him.

"Sir," Riza began softly, but stopped when Roy smiled up at her.

"He had a long night. Let him sleep." Roy then grimaced as he shifted in just the right way to get his shoulder hurting again. The painkillers that Pinako had given him the other day had worn off by morning and he could feel all the damage he had done to it by ignoring the fact that it was injured the previous night. "I should never have never taunted the boy with his greatest mistake."

Riza's eyes narrowed as she recalled something like this being mentioned the previous day. She glanced again at Edward, making sure that he was still asleep. She was still quite angry with him, after all, he had attacked and injured the man that she was sworn to protect and was his superior officer who he should respect.

"Sir, I believe you should give a proper explanation to all of your men." Riza said stiffly. Roy winced again, knowing that she was right. He shouldn't have let that happen yesterday, at least not that publically. He knew his men weren't gossips and were loyal to a fault, but what had happened yesterday would cause them to distrust not only him but Edward as well. Roy rose from behind his desk and gave Riza a quick nod. She strode from the room, letting him gather his thoughts.

Roy looked over at Ed, noticing that his golden eyes were open. He mouthed a 'good luck bastard' at him, making him scowl at the little blonde. He then pompously strode from the room, his ego instantly deflating as soon as he closed his office door, locking Edward inside. He then turned towards his men, noticing their eyes were all on him.

"Lock the door, Breda." He ordered instantly, pleased to see his man quickly hopping to. He waited until the door was locked and Breda was reseated before he began to explain.

"As all of you know, Edward and Al tried to bring their mother back to life years ago with human alchemy. They failed and it cost Al his body and Ed his arm and leg. It was because of this travesty that they came to join the military." Roy paused here, knowing that his men were impatient for the rest of the story, but he needed to figure out where the best place was to continue.

"After we had dinner with the Hughes's, a little black book of alchemy was found. After reading some, it was decided that it was Fullmetal's notebook. Maes then entrusted the book to me to return to Fullmetal." Here Roy swallowed with guilt. "I promised him that I would return the book that night. Instead, I went home and read through it, breaking my promise."

Roy didn't even look at his men. He didn't want to even know what they were thinking. And he could sense Riza's anger without even looking at her.

"In Fullmetal's book were things that I had no business reading. Notes on how to bring his mother back to life were amongst these notes. There was," he paused again, wincing. "incriminating information in that book. I then thought it would be funny to blackmail him with his own book."

He closed his eyes with regret. This was the hardest thing he had ever done. This was even harder then when he had quit drinking after Ishbal. Knowing that he had been completely in the wrong and that he needed to apologize to his men is what kept his going on with the tale.

"There wasn't just information on how to bring back the dead in his book though. Fullmetal had also filled the book with personal thoughts and feelings that I had no business reading, that I knew that he would kill to keep secret. So when he came yesterday looking for the book, I taunted him with it, knowing all of his secrets that he would do anything to keep quiet."

"Sir," Fuery began, but Roy ignored him, continuing on.

"He didn't react the way I thought he would. Instead of doing anything to keep it quiet, he was ready to kill me to keep it quiet. I even threatened to give his book to Maes and his squad so that everyone would know of his shame. I don't know if I would have really done it or not, much to my disgust." Roy finally looked up at his men. "I was in the wrong and Fullmetal did nothing wrong. Don't be angry with him." Roy said, shooting that last part at Riza who had the decency to blush.

"I'll understand if you would want to transfer out or if you no longer trust me. Just know that Fullmetal and I have come to an understanding and I think I have been forgiven. I'll leave you to your thoughts." Roy then turned on his heel and re-entered his office, this time leaving his door open.

Roy sat behind his desk and began to read through and sign papers. After five minutes had passed, Riza came and delivered more papers and closed the door behind her. As soon as the door was closed, Edward stopped pretending that he was sleeping and went over to Roy, wrapping his arms around the man that he loved.

"I forgive you." Edward murmured. "But you still owe me."

"Mmm? And what do you want me to do to get rid of my debt?" Roy asked, turning to wrap his arms around his boyfriend.

"You have to carry my library books for the next two weeks and you have to buy me dinner every night for two weeks." Edward informed him. Roy nodded, burying his face in Ed's chest.

"I'll do all that after your family has left." Roy murmured. Edward frowned.

"I guess you're right." Edward snuggled up against Roy, nuzzling the top of his dark head. After a few more minutes like this, Edward gently pushed Roy away. "You have work to do."

"And what are you going to do?" Roy demanded. Edward went back over and plopped down on the couch, closing his eyes.

"Sleep." He replied like it was obvious.

After ten minutes had passed with him doing nothing but work, he looked over at Ed and realized that he was really asleep this time. There were no soft snores, no occasional twitching, or even the slightest movement. Edward was dead still, his breaths so even and slow that you could barely tell that his chest was moving.

"Sir?" a deep voice asked, making him look up. He hadn't even noticed that his door had opened. All of his men stood there, even Riza. He glanced back over at Edward, making sure that the blonde was still asleep. He was disappointed to notice that Edward was back to faking sleep, having turned ever so slightly so he could hear what was going on even better.

"Colonel, we would like to say that we don't really approve of what you did, but we don't really like how Edward responded either. But we still trust you and if you don't mind sir, we'd like to stay." Breda spoke for all them, who were nodding at his words. Roy nodded in understanding.

"Very well men, get back to work."

"Sir," Hawkeye said, not returning to her desk. Roy looked up at her.

"Yes Lieutenant?"

"When Edward wakes up, please inform him that Alphonse will be back at 4:00 so that they may go to dinner with Winry and Pinako." Roy nodded.

"Understood." Hawkeye nodded and turned to leave but froze when she heard what was said.

"Did you hear that, Ed?"

"Yeah, Al's gonna be back at 4:00. I'm goin' back to sleep." Hawkeye turned around and saw Edward shifting on the couch so his back faced the rest of the room. She smiled, shaking her head, returning to her desk for work.

* * *

_What did you guys think? I wasn't really sure about this chapter, but like I said, this thing is kinda taking on a life of it's own. I keep going to go work on my other stories but I keep being drawn back to this and working on it. I mean, I was even drawn away from a cartoon series I was reacquainting myself with that I love dearly. Anyways, gimme some feedback since I know a lot of you aren't giving me feedback. _

_I mean, really, over 150 hits and I only get 8 reviews. Come on guys!_


	5. Chapter 4: Thoughts

**Chapter 4**

**Thoughts**

* * *

Roy had finally slacked off a little after 2:00pm. He instead contented himself with staring at Edward who was still sleeping. Running his fingers through his hair, he turned back to his paperwork just in time as Maes came bursting in.

"Roy!" Maes chimed happily. "You know old friend, what happened yesterday-" he began but was cut off by a flying book colliding with his face. He whirled around to see Edward still lying on the couch, his golden eyes glaring and looking pissed.

"Can't you be quiet?" Edward demanded. "I'm trying to sleep over here!" Edward growled.

Maes was stunned, blinking rapidly at Edward, looking at Roy, then going back to Ed. Roy found himself hard pressed not to laugh at his friend's baffled expression. The poor man obviously wasn't expecting this after yesterday's incident.

"Ed?" Maes finally managed. Ed rolled his eyes, turning his back to the rest of the room and laying down to go back to sleep. Roy shook his head.

"How much can you sleep?" he demanded. Edward shrugged.

"I dunno." Edward replied and after a couple of minutes seemed to drop off into sleep, but Roy knew that he was faking it again. Hawkeye came in with more paperwork and glanced over at Ed, her eyes gleaming with suspicion.

"Edward, don't you have to go to the library?" Riza asked. Edward didn't move or make any sort of indication that he had heard her. After a few minutes of waiting, Roy sighed, taking the paperwork from her. As much as he loathed having Edward leave, not that he would ever admit that aloud, he knew that Edward had things that he needed to do.

"Fullmetal, your brother is busy shopping with the Rockbells so it's safe to return to your dorm room for your books." Roy said gruffly. "So get the hell out of my office."

"Whatever bastard." Edward grumbled, finally showing life. "I'm only leaving because Hawkeye's right; I have other things I have to do than grace you with my magnificent presence."

"And you're not hiding from your brother hoping to be insignificant enough not to receive a berating for yesterday." muttered Roy, knowing how Edward would react.

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING INSIGNIFICANT ENOUGH TO BE STEPPED ON AN ANT? YOU FUCKING BASTARD! I'LL SHOW YOU FUCKING INSIGNIFICANT! I'M NOT INSIGNIFICANT ENOUGH TO BE SQUASHED BY A FLOATING SPECK OF DUST!" Edward screamed, throwing his usual small tantrum. He then turned on his heel and stormed out of the room. As soon as he was gone everyone in the office knew that everything had gone back to normal, with the exception of the head man who knew that he would probably be seeing his small boyfriend later on that night.

"So Roy, are you going to tell me what yesterday was about?" Maes asked Roy, his eyes gleaming with suspicion. His mind though was quickly traveling.

Gracia had told him that Ed's nose was broken, had repeated it when he came home last night and before he came to work that morning. When he had seen Ed just now, his nose had been just fine. It wasn't broken or even bruised.

He knew that Gracia hadn't been mistaken because when he had met her she had been a nurse at the hospital for civilians. Gracia, despite the fact that she had quit working after she had become pregnant, would know if a nose was broken or not.

So how had Ed's nose healed so fast?

* * *

Ed shook himself as he shrugged off his coat. He was back in his element, his dorm room without Al around. Checking to make sure that the door was locked with a spare chair jammed underneath of it; Ed finally released himself into his true form.

His hair, or rather fur now, grew down his spine to the very top of his butt crack where his tail was growing. His hair became a little shaggier and grew a little down the sides of his face making very thin lines that met at his chin like a beard. His fingernail grew long and sharp and after a moment, he retracted them. Hair grew on his chest and formed a trail to his bellybutton and then down his pants. His muscles grew larger and firmer, making his look more intimidating. He kicked off his boots as his foot changed, becoming more paw like but still large enough to support his body along with his automail leg. His ears then shifted to the top of his head, creating those adorable cat ears that everyone who had ever seen him in his chimera form loved. Black leopard spots then began to appear all over his body, his hair gaining black streaks in it.

Yawning happily at finally being able to relax, he carefully unwrapped the wrapping around his chest, not wanting to shred it. Once done, he ran his fingers through his hair and walked over to his desk, pulling all the information that he had already worked on and began to transfer it over to his little black alchemy book.

Ed paused after he had copied the second page out of fifteen pages as he remembered what Roy had done the previous day. All that did was prove to him that it was too dangerous to carry all of this information with him. Roy hadn't realized what the first twenty pages had been, which assured him that no one would know, but everything else...

No, he needed to transfer that information somewhere safer.

Perhaps if he kept another book that he would keep hidden, perhaps underneath of his mattress or maybe at Roy's house. That idea had promise but he didn't have another book to transfer everything into. He then shrugged; he'd have to pick one up then. But not now, though. He'd do it later.

He then went back to work, happily working away. His mind went into overdrive as he worked, connecting ideas and concepts together before he had even gotten that far, making his work easier to organize and copy down into his book. He cross referenced, double checked meanings, measurements, and names, making sure that he had everything straight and correct. He reread through what he had already read and made little side notes indicating alchemic patterns, arrays, compounds and type of alchemy that could definitely be associated with the parts of the body and what he wanted to do to it.

The phone began to ring, distracting Edward from what he was working on. Irritated, he reached over and answered it.

"What?" he growled, not noticing the obvious difference in his voice tone while in his chimera form. There was a pause before the person on the other end spoke.

"Um, Edward, this is Havoc. Hawkeye's having me call and tell you that Al, Winry and her grandmother are here for you right now so you guys can go to dinner." A male voice came over. Edward's eyes flickered over to his alarm clock next to his bed and saw that it was ten after four.

"Tell them I'll be there in a bit. I just need to finish what I'm doing real quick and I'll be there." Edward replied, his voice still deep and growly despite the fact that he wasn't growling anymore.

"Can do, boss. Hurry up though. That Winry girl's fondling a wrench and staring at the door." Edward nodded, forgetting that Havoc couldn't see him and hung up.

He quickly shifted back to his human form and ran into the bathroom, splashing water on his face. He unbraided his hair and ran the brush through it, enjoying the sensations. He quickly braided his hair and tied it at the end and strode back into the room. He sighed as he took off his shirt and began to wrap his chest again. There had to be something better than this.

Once his chest was wrapped, he pulled his shirt back on and then his boots. With a quick look down at the dirty pile of clothes on the floor, he decided that he'd do his laundry that night after they came back from dinner or after he saw Roy. He didn't care which. He pulled on his jacket and headed to the door, replacing the spare chair and leaving.

As soon as he left the dorm building, he regretted spending such a long time in his chimera form. Whenever he spent extended amounts of time in his chimera form, his eyes were ultra sensitive to light and even though it was late in the day, it was day time and it made his eyes hurt. Hissing with pain, he headed off at a run towards headquarters which was about a twenty minute walk away. When running, it was roughly five minutes to ten minutes away, depending on how fast he ran.

Edward was just about to round the corner when he remembered Havoc's comment about Winry being prepared to throw a wrench at the door. Sighing with regret, he turned the corner and only managed to take two steps before he was nailed in the head with a wrench.

"What the hell was that for?" he yelled angrily, pretending not to have already known that he had been about to be hit by a wrench.

"Edward Elric! How dare you not meet us at the train yesterday! And then you go and attack your superior officer and disappear all night! Do you know how worried I was? I spent all night worried about where you were and if you were alright! And then you show up this morning as if nothing happened yesterday! And you don't even say hello!" Winry yelled, throwing another wrench which Edward also allowed to hit him.

"I'm sorry Winry. I was-" Edward's mind flashed with how Al hadn't told him about Winry and Pinako arriving. "preoccupied." he finished lamely. Winry made to throw another wrench at him but stopped when she saw something in his eyes. Something that made her want to take him into her arms and tell him that everything was alright.

"Brother!" Alphonse suddenly chimed, running up to his brother and taking him into his arms. "I was so worried about you! You never came back last night."

Ed smiled up at his younger brother, relieved to see that he wasn't angry with him. When Al put him back down, Ed just gave him a reassuring smile.

"Why did you do that, brother? You know you shouldn't have done that to the Colonel! He's done so much for us that you should be grateful. You should apologize, brother." Alphonse scolded. Riza made to interrupt but was cut off by Ed himself.

"Don't worry, Al. The bastard colonel and I already talked." Ed then turned towards Pinako. "Hey Granny, I heard you stitched up the bastard. You didn't need to do that. You feeling hungry?" he asked. Pinako gave him a very small smile that no one else noticed.

"Of course, bean sprout. We've been waiting for you." She replied smugly. Edward blew up at her.

"I'M NO BEAN SPROUT! I'M TALLER THAN YOU, YOU OLD HAG!" he shrieked. Pinako walked over to him and thumped him on the head with her pipe.

"The young are supposed to be bigger than the old. You would know that if you were the bigger man." She continued to provoke him.

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SMALL THAT AN INFANT COULD SQUASH WITH THEIR RATTLE?" Edward began to throw the usual tantrum. Pinako just shook her head.

"Come along, Edward. Your stomach is telling me that it's just as hungry as I am. I'm sure you know a few good restaurants with your appetite." Pinako shot him an analyzing look. Edward shook his head subtly at her silent question of whether or not he had mated with Mustang.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he yelled at her. She nodded but then gave him a sly grin to which he looked away at, confirming his suspicion that he was giving Mustang a chance despite his inhibitions that he would wind up just like his mother.

"It means that you're a bottomless pit. Now lets go eat."

With that said and done, and the silent conversation finished with, Pinako headed out of the office, still playfully arguing with Edward with Winry and Al following them, chatting away. As soon as they were gone, the entire office returned to normal with the exception of both Hawkeye and Roy.

Roy had noticed that Edward hadn't ratted out Al not telling him about the Rockbell's arrival. Riza had noticed that Edward hadn't told Al what the fight between him and Roy had been about.

With these two things noticed, Roy began to wonder just how deep Edward's guilt ran. Riza began to wonder just how perfect the Elric relationship was. All she had ever seen before was two caring brothers who loved each other deeply and would do anything for each other to be happy, but seeing that, Riza began to wonder if Edward was giving up more than he should for Al's happiness.

* * *

_Sorry that, that took so long for me to post. I thought that I had posted that months ago! I didn't realize that it was still sitting in my USB waiting to be uploaded. So, here it is and I'm going to start working on this story again. I've been busy trying to convince my ex that I'm worthwhile to date again while also running interference between my brother and my mom's ex who are both vying for my best friend to start dating them. Yeah, hectic, but I've given up on my ex and I think I've suitably warned my best friend from my mom's ex and lectured about my brother so I should be having free time now unless the bar calls back about my job application._

_Anyways, here's the chapter, hope you enjoyed and I'll try to get the next one up soon! ;) Toodles!_


	6. Chapter 5: Feelings

**Chapter 5**

**Feelings**

Edward let out a sigh as he plopped down onto the bench next to Pinako. Apparently Al and Winry had been so eager to pick him up that they had forgotten to drop off all of their purchases at the hotel where Winry and Pinako were staying. So, before they went to go eat, they had stopped for Al and Winry go back to the hotel and drop off all the recently bought merchandise. Pinako had claimed fatigue so they were sitting on a bench in front of the restaurant where they planned to eat while Al and Winry ran off to the hotel six blocks away. It would take them a good fifteen minutes to return if they hurried.

"So, you're giving him a chance, huh?" Pinako asked, taking out her pipe and loading it up. Edward glanced over at her before he released another sigh and rested his head back against the back of the bech.

"Yeah."

"You didn't tell him?" she asked around her pipe as she lit it up. Edward closed his eyes.

"No." He paused for a moment, remembering how he had begun to change into his chimera form while they had been kissing on the couch. "But I don't think he'll stay uninformed for long."

"You're planning on-" Pinako started, her eyes wide as she peered at Edward. Edward shook his head.

"No, I'm not planning on that. It's just that while we were-" Edward blushed. "kissing, I started to transform."

Pinako sat back, considering what she had just been told. She puffed on her pipe a couple times before she spoke. "Did he notice?"

"No. I didn't even notice until I went into the bathroom to unwrap my breasts." Edward turned to look at the old lady next to him. "I won't tell him."

"Edward," she began, but Edward shook his head.

"No, I've thought about this. I will take this as far with Roy as I can, but if he wants to end it, if he wants to leave me, I'll let him." Edward bit his lower lip gently as he sat up, hiding behind his bangs. "I don't want to force him to do anything that he doesn't want to do. I won't make him stay with me out of obligation."

"And if he leaves you after the two of you mate?" she demanded. Edward closed his eyes, pained.

"Then I'll leave the military." murmured Edward. "I'll leave and go die somewhere, where no one will ever find my body."

Pinako nodded, understanding what Edward was saying. He would make sure that even in death that no one would learn of what Hoenhiem of Light had done to him, had turned him into. He would rather hurt those close to him in order to keep them safe.

"Edward, I want you to be careful, okay?" Pinako murmured softly. "I don't want to lose you."

"Yeah." he grunted in reply. Pinako chewed on her pipe for a minute, thinking.

"I remember back when you were little, you and your mother used to consider Winry, my son and his wife and I to be apart of your pard. I know that you still considered us to be apart of your pard after Winry's parents died, but you didn't before your mother died." Pinako said softly. "I just wanted to know why."

The two of them were silent for a while, listening to the wind rustle by and as people passed by them occasionally since it was getting late and people were hurrying home. Edward watched as people passed by, studying them as they went, getting his thoughts in order. He finally turned his golden gaze towards Pinako.

"I was rather insensitive when Winry's parents died. I didn't understand, I couldn't, and even now, I still don't. I can't understand sadness, or grief, or anything that Winry was feeling at the time. Do you remember how she cried for months?" he asked softly. Pinako gave a quick nod, sadness seeping through her as she remembered the blonde girl's pain from all those year ago. Nothing had consoled Winry, absolutely nothing.

"After listening to her cry for months nonstop, I finally snapped at her to get over her parents deaths. That they were dead and that they weren't coming back. Well, Winry got mad and screamed that she hoped that my mom died so I could feel what she was feeling. She then took off running and Al went after her." Pinako stared intently at Edward, having been completely unaware of any of this. "A little over two weeks later, we found mom collapsed."

Edward's hands clenched tightly into fists, his eyes flashing angrily. Pinako noticed that his fangs were beginning to grow and his voice had gotten a tad deeper, rougher. He felt very strongly about this, and she knew that if she touched him that there was a chance that he might hurt her, even unintentionally, in his anger.

"As mom got weaker and sicker, my animal side, my chimera side, it began to blame Winry for mom's death. Intellectually I know that Winry didn't mean it, that she didn't want my mom to die, but I can't help it. Mom was pard, she was the only other person like me and Winry had wanted her dead. I knew that mom was going to die, and I knew that unless my father returned that there was no chance of her ever getting better. But a part of me can't help but think that it was Winry's words that robbed mom of the last bit of strength that she had, that if she hadn't said that then mom would have lasted just a bit longer. So, I expelled Winry from my pard, managing to keep from killing in retaliation. Since you are Winry's grandma, I had to expell you as well because you're too closely connected to Winry for me to consider you pard and not punish you for what my animal side blames Winry for." Edward released his anger quickly, trying to calm down. It took a few minutes for all of it to fade away as well as for the few chimera traits that had popped up to face away. "Do you understand?"

Pinako reached over and touched his hand. "Of course, bean sprout."

"You old hag!" he growled, squeezing her hand in his. She may not be pard but she was still a friend.

"If you dislike Winry so much, why do you allow her to continue doing what she does to you?" Pinako murmured quietly as some people walked by as they peered at her and Edward. Then her eyes widened in understanding. "Alphonse."

Edward nodded and Pinako shook her head. She hated how much Edward kept giving up for Al and how he never seemed to get anything in return. Despite how much she hated that, she loved Alphonse like a grandson just as much as she loved Edward, but she would never condone what he was doing to his brother.

Pinako drew away, returning back to her pipe while Edward recentered himself. Pinako looked around her, her face furrowing with dislike. She shot a disdainful look towards Edward, quick to change topics and moods.

"How the hell do you live here? It's far too drab!" she spat. "Move back out into the country." Edward smiled slightly at her words.

"Roy." was all he said in response and Pinako shook her head with amusement. She then continued to bitch about all the negative aspects about living in the city (which according to Pinako was everything) while Edward pretended to listen, giving appropriate comments back occasionally while his mind mainly focused on day dreams of Roy.

He knew that he wouldn't move too fast with Roy, despite how much he already loved the flame alchemist, he still didn't want to end up like his mother. And moving too fast with Roy would definitely insure that he would wind up just like his mother.

* * *

_Okay, I know it's been a while and this is pretty short. I'm in college now and I'll admit, having a bit of fun with my friends. I've also been reviewing my stories and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to rewrite a lot of them. I'm pretty positive that I'm not going to do it with this one. So, relax, this story is safe as it is and I'm hoping to update it before Halloween, Thanksgiving at the latest. _

_Also, I've been hit with a truckload of inspiration lately. College has been very good to me in that respects. With a lot of adventure, meeting new people and seeing new perspectives, and meeting the boy of my dreams, everything's going alright. _

_The guy I'm talking about is just like Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, if you've seen the new movie. He looks a lot like him too except that he's 6'8" and has bright red hair. Okay, gushing and sounding a lot like a fangirl. I've got to get back to my Philosophy homework so until next time boys and girls!_


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